


A Picture in Reverse

by appleapple



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Action, Addiction, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drug Abuse, M/M, Suspense, mention of past child abuse, tech
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7354384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appleapple/pseuds/appleapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren's a hot mess<br/>Mikasa's at Vassar<br/>Armin's at MIT<br/>Levi's a frugal software millionaire and<br/>Erwin's an insecure tech mogul.</p><p> </p><p>OR</p><p>Not Another College AU!!!</p><p>(It's not.  You'll see.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Eren regretted coming before he’d even walked in the door. Standing outside on the sidewalk--hearing the laughter coming upstairs from the open windows--he wished he’d just stayed home. He thought about leaving--walking back to the train station he’d just come from--but he’d successfully avoided Armin for most of the summer already.

He grimaced. He’d have to make an appearance, or they’d come _looking_ for him. Sighing he pulled his phone out and texted Armin: _Here._

The response was instantaneous: _Great! I’ll buzz you in, come on up!_

Reluctantly Eren went forward, catching the door as it screamed at him and walking in.

“Eren!” a familiar voice called. “We’re up here! Second floor.”

He climbed the stairs, looking around him in faint surprise. Armin had moved here--when? He couldn’t remember, but he hadn’t been here before. It was a lot nicer than what he’d expected. It was a modern condo building, but unlike most of the new developments springing up all over Boston and Cambridge it was small--only a few units--and tastefully designed. Which--in this neighborhood especially--meant _expensive._

Armin and Historia welcomed him in, dragging him around and introducing him to people--he smiled politely, nodded, and grabbed a beer as they passed the kitchen. It was ten minutes of torture, but eventually he’d been introduced all around (pointlessly, since he’d already forgotten their names, and had no intention of seeing any of them ever again) and had wound up on the balcony alone with Armin.

He shook his head. The balcony was huge (for Boston) and _manicured_ for crying out loud! There were tiny cypress trees in pots out here and flowers--cyclamen, he thought. 

“Armin how can you _afford_ this place?” he said, before Armin could ask him any uncomfortable questions.

“Huh? It’s my roommate’s place--I told you that, remember?”

“You don’t pay rent? Who’s your roommate, Mark Zuckerberg?”

“Close enough,” Armin muttered. “His name’s Levi. He’s a start-up guy--he made a bunch of money designing software for self-driving cars.”

“So what are you doing rooming with him?”

Armin sighed. “I told you this--”

“Well, tell me again.”

“He dropped out of MIT to start a company, and he decided to go back to school last year to finish his degree. We met in one of my classes, and when my lease was up he offered to let me move in if I kept an eye on things when he’s traveling. He’s at a different company now--the Survey Corp.”

“They do apps, don’t they?”

“Sorta. It’s a tech company. His best friend owns it.”

“Jesus,” Eren muttered taking a sip of his beer. He’d met a few kids from wealthy families at Northeastern, but this was _scary_ money. He couldn’t believe these were people Armin was hanging out with.

“Is he here?”

“He said he might stop by later--”

“I’m gonna grab another beer,” Eren said, and he slipped back inside, congratulating himself on having avoided the discussion he could tell Armin was burning to have. All he had to do was have a few more beers, talk to some randos, and slip out early while Armin was distracted by someone else. Then he could probably go back to avoiding Armin indefinitely; classes had just started, and soon enough Armin would be absorbed in his own work anyway.

He grabbed two beers and went to the bathroom; chugged one and dumped the empty in the garbage can. For courage he took out the pills in his breast pocket and swallowed two; then he splashed some water on his face. He wanted to run out of there; go home and just drink until he passed out. But if he didn’t convince Armin he was fine tonight the consequences would be far worse than putting in an appearance at a party.

He dried his face off and then he looked with dissatisfaction at his reflection. Then he sighed and went back out.

 

 

 

 

“What the fuck is he on?” an unfamiliar voice said.

There were voices all around him, talking loudly, and he heard someone say, “Call 911!”

“No!” he snapped, jerking into full awareness. “I’m not going to the hospital! Let me go, fuck you, I’m fine!”

“Don’t call,” the man who’d first spoken said. He had dark hair and gray eyes; he was studying Eren intently.

“But--”

“What did you take?” the man asked him. “Tell me, or you _are_ going to the hospital.”

“Just pills,” he mumbled.

“Uh huh. What kind of pills?”

“I don’t know, I just got them today…”

“What kind of idiot are you?” the man wondered aloud. He searched Eren, finding the little plastic baggie he’d gotten from Doug earlier that afternoon before Eren could do anything to stop him.

“Uh huh,” he said, looking at them. “Is this all? Anything else?”

“Just beer,” Eren said muzzily.

“Yeah, right, you smell like a distillery.” He pocketed the pills.

“What are they?” Armin asked, behind his shoulder.

The man ignored this. “We’re going to make a deal,” he said to Eren. “You do exactly what I tell you.”

“Or...what?”

“Or you go to the ER, and they call your emergency contact--”

He gritted his teeth. “What do you want?” he said, but the man had already pulled his phone out, finger poised over the touchscreen.

“I’m not fucking around,” he said. “You get one shot. Do what I tell you, no arguing, or go to the hospital. That’s it.”

He bowed his head. _“Fine.”_

Suddenly his shirt was being pulled over his head--”Hey!” he said, struggling. The shower was on and he was being dunked into cold water, spluttering, and fingers were stuck down his throat. The guy--holy fuck was he strong. After a couple of minutes he gave up and just did what he was told. He had vomited everything that was in his stomach into the shower. He could hear voices but he was too dizzy and drunk to focus on what they were saying. Hands were around him, dragging him to his feet, a borrowed MIT t-shirt was shoved over his head and a cold, wet towel was pressed to his face.

He held it there, as he was half-dragged, half-carried from the room.

It was dark outside. The last thing he heard as they left was Armin’s voice, calling after them, “Are you sure--”

The man pushed him into a waiting car and the driver confirmed the address.

Eren looked at him blearily. “How do you know where I live?”

“How do you think, dumbass?” the guy said; he was fucking around on his phone, not looking at Eren. Eren unrolled the window and leaned his head out.

When he woke up again they were at his apartment, and the man was steering him out of the car. Then they were in his room and he was in his own bed, and he passed out gratefully.

 

 

 

 

When he woke up again he rolled over, groaning. He had a clock radio because he forgot to charge his phone often enough that it had seemed like a good idea; when he looked at it it said 1:15.

“Fuck,” he muttered, holding his face in his hands, trying to piece together the night before.

“You’re awake, huh?” someone said.

“What the fuck!” Eren screamed, practically falling out of the bed. “You’re still here! Jesus christ!”

The man from the night before was sitting at the counter in Eren’s kitchen, laptop open in front of him, drinking from a ceramic mug. 

He didn’t look up from what he was typing, and he didn’t say anything.

“What are you doing here?” Eren demanded--and then he noticed something. He lived in a studio apartment, by himself--there was enough money left from his mother’s life insurance for such luxuries--and while he wasn’t a complete slob he wasn’t tidy either. 

The apartment was spotless.

“What--” he repeated, bewildered. 

“I cleared out your stash,” the man said. “If you’re looking for it. Nothing left.”

“Who the hell _are_ you?” Eren asked.

“My name’s Levi.”

“Armin’s roommate,” Eren sighed. “Great. Well, look, it was real nice of you to bring me home from Armin’s last night, and clean my apartment and stare at me while I sleep--not creepy at all--but--”

“Levi Ackerman,” he said.

Eren closed his eyes. “Shit,” he breathed.

“Yeah.”

“You’re--you’re related to Mikasa?”

“She’s my cousin.”

“I didn’t think she had any relatives,” Eren said dully.

“I hadn’t seen her since I was a kid. She found me on Facebook. We started talking. She asked me to check up on you.”

Eren looked at him with a trace of fear--“You’re not gonna tell her--”

“That depends on you,” Levi said.

“What do you _want?”_

“That’s an existential question,” Levi said, “that doesn’t have anything to do with our present situation. What you’re going to do is go to rehab.”

“No!”

“Or, I tell Mikasa you’re fucked six ways to Sunday and she hauls ass down here to take care of you. How far from Vassar to here, do you think? Only three hours if she speeds. I can wait with you until she gets here.”

“You can’t DO that! She’s in her last year! She’s going to law school next year!”

“You don’t think she’d give that up for you?” Levi asked thoughtfully.

Eren glared at him. “I can’t go to rehab,” he said finally.

“Said every addict ever.”

“I’m not--ugh, I have _class!”_

“We’ll figure it out,” Levi said, implacably. “You don’t have class on Monday--smart, really, scheduling things that way so you can have a three day binge on the weekends--and it’s only Saturday. You can do inpatient for two days and then they’ll set you up with outpatient and counseling.”

Eren shook his head, eyes closed. He felt the sides of a trap closing in all around him. “Who the fuck are you? Mikasa never said anything about you. How _old_ are you?” he said accusingly, and Levi smiled. He got up, picked up a glass of water, and walked over to where Eren was sitting. 

He handed him the water, and a pill bottle. “It’ll help with the withdrawals,” he said. “And I’m old enough to have done all this before--more than once, as a matter of fact.”

He pushed up his sleeve and turned his arm. Eren stared at it--he saw faint scars on the pale skin, and didn’t know what he was looking at at first.

 _“You_ did _heroin?”_ he said.

“Glad to see that white-boy suburbia hasn’t been totally bred out of you,” Levi said, amused, rolling his sleeve back down. “And I’m guessing by your scandalized tone that you haven’t yet, which should make things a little easier for you.”

Eren blushed. “I wouldn’t--”

Levi shrugged. “Maybe not. But in my experience once you start taking pills that you don’t even know the name of you don’t have that much further down to go.” 

His phone started to buzz, and he went to answer it. “Yeah,” he said, “Yeah.” Then he went to the door.

“Thanks,” he said, taking some bags from a delivery guy. 

“I didn’t know what you liked,” he said, coming back with the bags. “So I got a few things.” 

He handed the bags to Eren and went and got a glass of water for himself from the kitchen. He came back, carrying the glass and his laptop.

Eren was still holding the bags, looking defeated.

“Move over,” Levi said.

Levi propped the laptop up on the stool and sat on the bed beside Eren, leaning with his back against the wall. He took one of the bags from Eren and started to open it.

Eren was trying to think of something to say--anything to say. But he couldn’t. 

“Pad Thai?” Levi asked, handing him a container. He pressed a button on his laptop, and the familiar music from the _Game of Thrones_ theme queued up. 

Eren took the container. “Thanks,” he muttered, with no real enthusiasm.

 

 

 

 

Levi stayed all afternoon. After a while Eren gave up on trying to get him to leave. It was weird watching tv and eating take-out like a normal person. He’d spent most of the summer alone, staggering from one binge into another, eating very little apart from what he could grub from the McDonald’s and the Taco Bell on the corner. They watched _Game of Thrones_ for four hours, and then Levi got up, stretching.

“Ready to go?”

“Now?”

“I packed a bag for you,” Levi said.

Eren stared at him. “I think you’re a sociopath,” he said.

Levi’s phone buzzed. “Car’s here,” he said. “Let’s go.”

There was nothing he could do; he stood up and followed Levi out of the room, shouldering the bag Levi gave him in resignation.

They didn’t talk on the drive. Levi was dicking around on his phone as usual. Eren stared moodily out of the window. How had this happened? Twenty four hours ago he’d had everything under control...now he was here, beholden to this _stranger._

They arrived at a non-descript white Victorian house and Levi got out to walk him to the door. 

“I’ll pick you up on Monday,” Levi said casually, and Eren glared at him.

“Look, I don’t know why you think you can just walk into my life and take over like this. I don’t know you at all--”

“I can have Mikasa pick you up, if you’d prefer,” Levi said.

Eren stared at him silently for a moment. “I hate you,” he said.

“Uh huh. See you Monday.”

 

 

 

 

Monday came. Levi was right on time, waiting outside in another Uber.

“How was it?” he asked.

Eren leaned back in his seat. “There were some really fucked up people in there,” he said at last.

“Put the fear of God into you, did it?”

He shrugged. “They set me up with stuff. You can just drop me at my place.”

“I could do that,” Levi agreed, and Eren set his jaw. He didn’t want to argue in front of the driver, though, so he stared out the window instead.

When they were back at Eren’s apartment he wasn’t surprised when Levi followed him in. He looked around; it was even cleaner than it had been before. He sighed.

“Do you want to grab a coffee?”

“Huh?”

“There’s a place on the corner. Or, we can do this here. Your choice.”

“Do _what.”_

“Talk. About what happens next.”

“What happens next is I go to the stupid counseling and you leave me alone!” Eren said.

“So, here then?” Levi asked.

Eren pressed a hand to his head in frustration. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Let’s go.”

They walked to the place down the block--it was an independent coffee shop, usually full of students, but they found an empty table on the patio. Levi got a green tea and he got a coffee.

“When do you see the counselor?” Levi asked when they were sitting down.

“Tomorrow.”

“I know what you’re going through,” Levi said, and Eren made a face.

“Look if this is some fucking bonding thing--if you think you’re going to _mentor_ me--”

“I read the news reports,” Levi said, interrupting him.

“Huh?” Eren said, bewildered.

“When Mikasa contacted me again she didn’t tell me what happened to her family,” Levi said calmly, and Eren went cold and pale.

“She just said her parents had passed away when she was a child, and family friends had taken her in and raised her. She told me more about you than she did about herself, to be honest. She’s really worried about you. That’s how Armin ended up rooming with me--it seemed an odd coincidence that he was in one of my classes. She told me about him, too. I started talking to him. Introduced myself.”

Eren said nothing. His hands were shaking, and he tried to keep them still.

“I’m guessing he doesn’t know about what you two did.”

Well, fuck.

“No,” Eren said. “How did you find out? It wasn’t...they didn’t put that in the newspapers.”

“I have ways of finding out all kinds of things,” Levi said. “You killed three people. At ten years old. Kind of amazing.”

“It was self-defense.”

“Oh, I know.”

Eren crossed his arms protectively and looked away.

“Didn’t your parents send you to counseling afterward?” he asked curiously. “Your father was a doctor, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Eren said. “I went for a while. The guy was always trying to get me to talk about what happened...I’d talk about soccer, video games and stuff instead. Eventually I told my dad I didn’t want to go anymore and he let me stop.”

“Why didn’t you want to talk about it?”

“Because--because I wasn’t sorry!” Eren said, slamming his hand down hard on the table. A few people sitting at the tables nearby stopped talking and stared at him; he didn’t care. He leaned forward but Levi didn’t move an inch; just stared back at him so infuriatingly calm and collected.

“They killed Mikasa’s parents. They were going to kidnap her and sell her to people who were going to rape her! I pretended to be sorry when the police talked to me--the prosecutor--because that was what they wanted. But I wasn’t sorry. They were monsters. They deserved to die. And I’m still not sorry.” He stared at Levi, defiant and furious.

“I was nine the first time I killed someone,” Levi said calmly.

Eren blinked at him in shock. He was still leaning forward on the table--he’d been trying to get into Levi’s face. He couldn’t move.

“We didn’t live in a good neighborhood,” Levi said. He took a sip of his tea. “My mother died--I don’t even remember how old I was. Cancer. A man took me in after that--my uncle, though I didn’t find that out until later.

“One day I woke up and he was just gone. I knew I couldn’t stay in the apartment long--it was only paid through the month, and I didn’t have any money. I had no place to go. I didn’t know what to do.”

Eren could only stare at him, hardly breathing.

“There was a man down the hall--a neighbor--he offered me food when he saw me digging around in the dumpster behind the building.

“I went back inside with him.”

Eren felt sick, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Levi’s.

“He tried to rape me,” Levi said. He took another sip of his tea. “He didn’t know that before he left, my uncle taught me how to use a knife.”

He stared hard at Eren then. “I wasn’t sorry either.”

“Fuck,” Eren said quietly. He didn’t know what else _to_ say. “What did you do?”

“I went back to the apartment. My uncle--Kenny--he came back after all. That time. It was after that that I met Mikasa. Kenny took me to see her parents once--she was only a baby then. So she wouldn’t have remembered me, but I guess her parents told her about me when she was growing up.

“They were kind to me. I don’t think her father trusted Kenny much; they offered to take me from him.”

Eren tried to picture it--Mikasa growing up with a protective older brother. “Why didn’t they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Kenny wouldn’t let them--maybe he agreed but never got around to dropping me off with them--maybe he just forgot. He left for good not long after that and I ended up in foster care. That’s all I know.”

“Jesus,” Eren muttered. “I’m sorry.”

Levi shrugged. “I know what you’re going through,” he said again. “I’m not trying to be compassionate. But I understand--I understand you’re not taking this seriously.”

“Levi--”

“Why would you? You don’t want to get sober; you want to be high all the time so you don’t have to think about your problems. I know about that--believe me. You didn’t come to this on your own. You’re being blackmailed into it, and I know that doesn’t usually work.

“But I care about Mikasa. I don’t want to see her suffer anymore. I feel like she’s had more than her fair share. I lost my mother, but she’s lost _two_ mothers. _Two_ fathers. And so much other shit…”

Eren pressed his face into his hands.

“She shouldn’t have to lose her brother too. So if I have to follow you around and babysit you and blackmail you into being sober I will. I don’t give a shit if it’s unethical. What do you think she’s gonna do if she has to bury you?”

“I wasn’t--”

“There were forty-three empty vodka bottles alone in your room, Eren; that’s some Amy Winehouse shit.”

Eren didn’t reply. Levi took another sip of his tea.

“So, you’re going to go to counseling. Meetings aren’t for everyone, but you can try that too. And once a week you’re going to see me. If I’m suspicious that you’re up to something--well, we’ll deal with that if it happens. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen, huh?”

“Does Mikasa know?” Eren asked suddenly. “That--about--what happened to you?”

“Not really. I told her my mother died and I grew up in foster care. She didn’t press me for details.”

“I won’t tell her,” Eren said.

“Thanks,” Levi said drily. He drained his cup. Then he said, “For what it’s worth, Eren--I don’t think you’re a real addict. I mean, I’ve seen people that would sell their sister for a hit. I think you’re running from something. That’s good news and bad news--good news because it will be easier for you to stop, bad news because if you don’t deal with whatever it is you’re running from you’ll just keep going back to drugs and booze.”

“Which kind were you?” Eren asked. Levi had stood up; Eren stared defiantly up at him. Levi just smiled-- _what do you think?_ the look he gave him clearly said.

 

 

 

 

Eren met the counselor. He went to a couple of meetings. He went to his classes and did his homework. When Mikasa and Armin called he ignored it; but when they texted him he’d text them back.

Levi had taken his wallet-- “I’ll give it back later,” he’d said, ignoring Eren’s protests. In exchange he’d added his own credit card to Eren’s Foodler account, and ordered a bunch of groceries for him. He white-knuckled it through the weekend, and when the urge to go and get something got strong he told himself he didn’t have any money anyway. He could have pawned something--like his laptop--but he told himself he wasn’t _that_ kind of person…

Also he wouldn’t have been surprised if the moment before he walked into the pawn shop Levi would be there, tapping him on the shoulder.

Levi had been texting him all week. Mostly check in texts-- _How are you doing? How are things going? How was class?_ Usually he responded with one word answers, trying to be passive aggressive, but when he occasionally responded with more friendliness--complaining about class, or some other little problem--Levi would offer immediate (and useful) advice or assistance.

It was weird.

On Monday he met Levi at a Thai restaurant near his apartment. He’d meant to be cool and distant--to show he was handling things just fine and didn’t need a babysitter, thanks--but Levi pre-empted this by making a bunch of faces at his phone and texting furiously in the doorway of the restaurant while Eren stood there awkwardly. 

“What’s wrong?” he said at last.

“Fucking Erwin,” Levi muttered, and he stuck the phone in his pocket, looking grumpy.

The ac hit them when they walked into the restaurant, and a smiling server brought them to a table.

“Who?”

“My partner. _Business_ partner,” he said, when Eren gave him a look. “He’s in town, staying at my place, being a fucking pain in the ass. Trying to seduce Armin.”

“What!?”

“Into working for him, Jesus, do you think about anything besides sex?”

Eren blushed and stared at the menu. “Is--is that the guy--the Survey Corp guy?”

“Yeah,” Levi said.

“Armin said he was your best friend.”

Levi shrugged; “He’s still a pain in the ass. What do you want? I’m starving.”

They ordered the food. “So how’d it go this week?” Levi asked, and Eren answered honestly, forgetting to be cool and aloof.

“I went to some meetings. They were okay, I guess. I was the youngest person there except for the ones that were in ankle bracelets.” He grimaced. Levi snorted.

“That sounds about right. You don’t have to go to them. How was counseling?”

“All right,” Eren said, shrugging.

“Going to lie your way out of it again?”

“Maybe,” Eren said, glaring at him, and Levi smiled back.

Their appetizers came. “Ugh,” Levi said, pulling his phone out again.

“You could set it to silent.”

“It might be important,” he said. “No, it’s not, just Erwin bitching because someone bought his plane.”

“Huh?”

“He wants a private jet because he’s an asshole, but he can’t afford a new one. He was bidding on a used one at an auction and someone outbid him.”

“Wanting a plane makes him an asshole?”

“He doesn’t need a plane. It’s an affectation. Now he’s calling me a hypocrite. Fuck you Erwin,” Levi said, speaking the last words slowly as he typed them out on the phone, and Eren laughed.

“We have offices in San Francisco and Boston. That’s it. It’s not like he’s flying all over the world every week. He should just charter a plane with the guys down the hall if he doesn’t want to fly commercial, but he won’t do it. He’s throwing a tantrum instead.” Levi shook his head. “Sorry, I’ll ignore him now. What did you tell Mikasa?”

Eren blinked a few times. “What do you mean? I thought you talked to her?”

“No, I blew her off. I told you I wouldn’t tell her if you behaved; so far you have been.”

“Oh. I was just...sort of vague. I guess I should tell her something.”

Levi shrugged. “Just tell the truth then. Tell her you’ve been partying too hard, but you’re going to buckle down now and be a good boy and--what is it--go to law school too?”

“Well, I’m poli-sci,” Eren said. “And I’m a year behind her. But yeah, I was thinking about it.”

“Your mom was a lawyer?”

“Yeah,” Eren said, looking down at his plate. She had died at the beginning of Eren’s senior year of high school. Three years ago now, but it still felt raw.

The rest of their food came out; Levi speared some noodles and tactfully changed the subject. 

“I saw some books on your shelf. You’re into the classics?”

“Well--yeah. I thought about being a history major...or classics, but poli-sci seemed to make more sense if I was going to law school…”

“Hmm,” Levi said. “You had Homer in three translations.”

Eren smiled then. “You noticed that? There’s different nuances...well, I’m sure you know…”

“Ever think about learning Greek?”

Eren laughed, “So I could read the originals? Kind of an undertaking. I’m too old anyway.”

“Maybe not. What about the gym? You doing anything physical?”

“Well, there’s a gym on campus--”

“You used to do MMA didn’t you?”

Eren looked surprised. “Mikasa told you that? Yeah, I stopped…”

“Why don’t you get back into it again? There’s a gym not too far from you, only about three quarters of a mile. I’ll get you a membership--”

“You don’t have to--” Eren started to say, but Levi had pulled out his phone again and was tapping things into it. A few moments later Eren felt an answering buzz in his own pocket.

“There, got you a membership,” he said. Eren was giving him a funny look, so he said, “You’ve got to do something with all your new free time. Good way to keep from relapsing.”

“About that--”

“Hmm?”

“Well, I had a beer on Friday,” Eren admitted. He hadn’t meant to tell Levi that. His attitude most of the week had been ‘fuck Levi’ so he didn’t know why he was confessing. He’d met Doug coming in and he’d invited him over.

“Just one?”

“Yeah…”

“World didn’t end, huh?” Levi said, looking amused. Eren looked back in surprise; that hadn’t been the reaction he’d been expecting. 

“You don’t...care?”

“It’s not straightforward,” Levi said. “Maybe you _can_ have one beer and be fine. Maybe the next time it’ll tip off a binge for you and you’ll decide it’s not worth it.” Levi shrugged. “That’s _your_ job to figure out. You look much better than you did when I met you.”

“Do you ever miss it?” Eren blurted out.

“What, _heroin?_ Fuck no, those were the worst years of my life.”

 _Years?_ Eren wondered, but out loud he said, “I mean...oblivion.”

“Ah. That. No.”

“Not at all?”

“If you work at this you can get something better,” Levi said easily. “There aren’t many guarantees in this life, but that’s one of them.” He waved the waitress over and handed her his credit card. 

“You walking back? I’ll walk with you.”

 

 

 

 

He didn’t know that he was doing it, but he’d started to count the days until he’d see Levi again. They always met for lunch--different places, usually Thai or sushi, sometimes little hole in the wall cafes that had amazing tacos or ceviche. Eren had never had ceviche before.

Levi would talk about school and complain about Erwin--apparently, he’d extended his stay and didn’t show any sign of returning to San Francisco--and Eren would talk about his classes, going to the gym, staying sober.

He thought it said something about Levi that he never felt odd or out of place in these conversations--Levi never made him feel like his life was small or stupid, even though his was extraordinary. Levi had never been as open about his own life as he had when he’d brought Eren back from rehab that day, telling him about his childhood, but Eren had gathered bits and pieces during their weekly talks.

“How old are you exactly?” he said one day, over sashimi and nigiri.

“Thirty-two,” Levi said promptly, and Eren’s mouth fell open. Levi Looked at him.

“Uh, that’s--you don’t look it.”

“Thanks,” Levi said drily; why did it make him feel sad to learn that? Eren wondered. He was twenty-one. He’d be twenty-two in the spring.

Levi picked up a piece of sushi gracefully in his chopsticks, dipped it in soy sauce, and brought it to his mouth.

“MIT doesn’t mind that you’re an old man?” he asked.

Levi snorted. “No, because I’m a rich old man and they expect to profit handsomely,” he retorted.

Eren smiled. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s a weird place. It’s not like other places. They’re my _people,_ Eren,” he drawled.

“Freaks and weirdos?” Eren said, grinning. He was familiar by now with Levi’s thoughts on his classmates--and to some extent, himself.

“Exactly. I have a fifteen year old in one of my classes, and a forty year old in another one. I’m pretty sure the forty year old doesn’t actually go to MIT, but the professor is too senile to notice who actually belongs there. Just like you do, we have the usual undergrad morons, but they’re outnumbered by the… _interesting_ people.”

“Well, you’re very interesting,” Eren grinned at him.

 _“Thanks,”_ Levi said tartly, “So are you.”

Eren spent the rest of the day wondering if it had been a compliment or an insult; eventually he decided it had been both.

 

 

 

 

One Monday morning in October he woke up feeling weirdly happy; he’d had a good dream…

“Oh, _shit,”_ he said sitting straight up in shock and horror. “Fuck me. Fuck no. No way. No way. No way.”

He grabbed for his phone and hurried through the contacts; Sherri, she was in his _Global Revolution_ class, _Hey you wanna grab dinner tonight?_

She texted back right away, _Sure_ with a smiley after it.

“Fuck,” he muttered again leaning his head forward in his hands. He told himself he was way too old to be having an identity crisis, took some deep breaths, and got up to take a shower.

An hour later he was reading when his phone buzzed--it was Levi.

_Caught up in something, not sure I can make it across town in time. Dinner?_

His heart sped up. _Can’t. Busy._

And then, hating himself he added, _Want me to come to you?_

_Yeah, that’d be great, good Thai place on the corner. I can take a break. Meet at the house?_

_Ok,_ he tapped back. “Damn it,” he muttered to himself. But it wasn’t like he could avoid Levi...and anyhow he didn’t want to.

He hadn’t been back to Levi and Armin’s place in two months, not since the night he’d nearly overdosed. He hadn’t seen Armin since then either--in spite of the latter’s attempts to meet up with him. He felt guilty about that, suddenly, and guiltier still for hoping that he wouldn’t bump into Armin when he went to meet Levi. 

It wasn’t just that he felt bad about avoiding him. He didn’t want Armin to decide to tag along, and he felt ashamed of that, but he wanted Levi to himself. It didn’t occur to him that Armin might have been a good buffer between himself and Levi. He had a date with a girl that night--he told himself that meant he could enjoy seeing Levi with a clear conscience.

 _Here,_ he texted when he’d arrived outside the building.

 _K,_ was the immediate response, and the door buzzed. He let himself in and climbed up the stairs. The door to their apartment was propped open so he walked in.

“Levi?” he called, and then paused; there was an enormous blond man in the middle of the living room, kitted out in VR equipment.

The guy pushed his headset up to his forehead. “Eren?” he guessed.

“Uh. Yeah. Hi.”

“Erwin Smith,” he said, smiling. He had perfect teeth. He looked like a movie star. 

Levi came out while Eren was still staring awkwardly, wondering if he should say something. The only thing he could think of though, was, “I’ve never met a billionaire before,” which, apart from being really stupid he wasn’t sure was even true. Erwin might only be a multi- multi-millionaire.

“Will you stop running around in that shit? You look like a douchebag,” Levi said.

“I’m the CEO of a tech company, Levi. I have to keep up with--”

“If you invest in that shit I’m going to disown you. First of all, when the oculus rift comes out it’s gonna be a dinosaur--”

“The oculus is still years away from wide release, and--”

“Second, the price point is too high and the manufacturing costs are ridiculous. You’ll never make your money back because no one’s going to buy that thing. I actually do think you’re too smart to invest in it, which means you’re not ‘testdriving’ it or whatever, you’re just fucking around, when you could be doing actual work, like, you know, the shit you’re making _me_ do.”

Before Erwin could stop him Levi had snatched the headset from him and put it on. He kept it on for a minute, then took it off, shaking his head at Erwin in disappointment.

Eren watched all this in amazement; Erwin was blushing as he grabbed the headset back. “So, uh, where are you going?” he asked, changing the subject. “Lunch?”

“You can’t come,” Levi said bluntly, taking Eren by the elbow and maneuvering him out of the room.

Erwin sighed. “You’re in a foul mood today,” he remarked. 

“Yeah, some asshole roped me into working on his project which is behind, when I have more important shit to do like homework,” Levi said over his shoulder.

“You’re heavily invested in the project too!”

“Uh huh, and I’m supposed to be on sabbatical for Christ’s sake,” Levi said. By now they were downstairs and he had to yell this back up to Erwin. Then they were outside.

Eren smiled at him.

“He’s impossible,” Levi complained.

“He seemed nice.”

Levi snorted. 

The restaurant was on the next block and they sat inside rather than out on the patio. It was getting cooler out. 

“What do you want?”

“Uh--massaman curry and garlic udon?”

“Sounds good to me,” Levi said.

Eren asked him about the project he was working on--Levi made a face and started on an explanation Eren didn’t really follow--except that it had something to do with algorithms. But Eren nodded and made the right noises. Levi ranted until he’d burned himself out; then the food was there.

“Are you all right?” Levi asked suddenly. “You’re acting squirrely.”

Eren laughed in surprise. “Yeah, I, uh, have a date tonight…”

“Ah,” Levi said, giving him a knowing look, and Eren had to smile back though it was for entirely different reasons.

Levi paid the bill as soon as they’d finished--“Sorry, kid, I’ve gotta get back to this stupid shit,” Levi muttered, scribbling his name on the bill. “You gonna walk to the T?” He meant the subway, the closest stop was only a block away. 

“Yeah,” Eren said.

“I’m guessing you haven’t been on a date since I fished you out of the bathtub, huh?”

“Longer than that,” Eren admitted, feeling obscurely guilty. 

“It’s good you’re putting yourself out there,” Levi said abruptly. “I’m proud of you. To be honest, I thought you were going to be much more of a pain in the ass then you’ve turned out to be, considering how I met you.”

Eren covered his eyes and made an embarrassed noise. “Yeah, well I was a hot mess,” he said. “Thanks for...everything.”

“You’re welcome,” Levi said. 

Eren dropped his hands to his lap and looked at Levi, who was smiling at him--without a trace of irony for once.

 _Shit,_ Eren thought. He’d never been very good at deciphering his own emotions, but he had a sudden premonition that this was going to be more difficult than he’d anticipated.

“I’ve gotta get back,” Levi said again, slipping out of the booth. “I’ll see you next week. Text me if you need anything, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks for lunch. See you Monday.”

He wouldn’t--but he didn’t know that yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's late when Levi's phone buzzes, but he's still up coding for Erwin. He yawns and taps the phone. It's Eren.
> 
>   _Hey what was Erwin watching in the VR? Porn?_
> 
> Levi smiles and types back:
> 
>   _HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA_
> 
> On the other side of the river Eren smiles when he gets the text, then his phone starts vibrating crazily as more messages arrive:
> 
> _Ok so erwin's secret dream is to be a guest judge on shark tank_
> 
>   _lolllllllll no way_
> 
> _Yes way. He applied for the show and they turned him down!!!!!!!1!!!_
> 
> _lollllllllllllll poor guy_
> 
> _Yeah so he was pretending to be Mark Cuban. Shark Tank app thing_
> 
> _no effffffing way!!!!_
> 
> _For real. Biggest man crush. He's super self-conscious about it._
> 
> _lmao_
> 
>   _How was your date?_
> 
> _Good_
> 
> Levi saw the one-word answer and smiled, shaking his head. He put the phone aside and went back to his laptop; a few minutes later it buzzed again.
> 
> _Is Armin mad at me?_
> 
> Levi pondered this for a moment, then typed back, _Not that I know of. Why?_
> 
> _I've been a shitty friend. And I ruined his party._
> 
> _It was already tapering. And the kids that were left were so sheltered--it was good for them to see some shit go down._
> 
> _Ha. Ha._
> 
>  Pause; then Eren typed, _Did you tell them to back off?_
> 
>   _Maybe._
> 
> _Thanks. Is Armin still up?_
> 
> _Yeah. Playing Skyrim w Erwin in living room._
> 
>   _Ha. Ok. I'll call him. Say sorry for being a dipshit._
> 
> _Good luck_
> 
> _Thanks_
> 
> _np_
> 
> _Really thanks_
> 
>  Levi looked at that text longer than the others. Then he heard Armin's voice out in the living room, getting louder and then disappearing into his bedroom. He pondered his phone for another minute, then he went back to his laptop.


	2. Chapter 2

Saturday morning was the day of the Regatta, a bright, clear, sunny October day with a hint of bite in the air. Mikasa had shown up unannounced early that morning, smiling awkwardly at Armin when he’d answered the door for her, as if she expected to be turned away.

“Come in!” he’d hailed her. “But why didn’t you call me?”

“It was sort of last minute,” she muttered. “And I--I don’t know. I should have…”

“Have you talked to Eren?” he asked, guessing the source of her anxiety. They were in the kitchen, and he went over to the French press to start making coffee.

“Just texts. He never answers when I call.”

“He called me the other day.”

“He did?” she said, astounded.

“He feels bad about--everything. I don’t think you should take it personally if he hasn’t called you yet. He’s probably working up to it.”

Mikasa sighed. “I just wish…”

“I know.”

He handed her a cup of coffee. “Thanks,” she said. “Levi said I smother him.”

“No comment.”

She smiled sadly. “I’ve been trying to back off. I guess it’s working. I stopped getting the one-word texts.”

Armin laughed. “I think he is trying.”

“Yeah. I didn’t expect him and Levi to hit it off so well. _He_ never has any problem hearing back from Eren.”

“I get the impression it’s because Eren knows he’ll break his legs if he doesn’t,” Armin said, slightly amused, but Mikasa was shaking her head.

“No, it’s more than that. They’re cut from the same cloth. I guess I should have seen that.”

Before he could respond Historia walked out of Armin’s room, yawning.

“Hey, Mikasa,” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming.” She came to sit on the edge of the counter and took a sip from Armin’s coffee cup.

“It was kind of last minute,” Mikasa said.

“Are you coming to Erwin’s thing?”

“Hmm?”

“He says he’s got a surprise for us. We’re supposed to go over there soon.”

She turned Armin’s wrist to look at his watch. “We should get going, babe.”

Mikasa smirked, but Armin missed it--he was nodding in agreement. “I’ll call a car if you want to hop in the shower.”

She nodded, sliding down from the counter.

“I don’t want to--” Mikasa started to say, but Armin interrupted her.

“He likes showing off,” he said, dismissing her protests. “He’ll be happy to have a bigger audience.”

“Are...Eren and Levi going to be there?”

“Levi’s supposed to come, but he’s been threatening not to all week,” Armin said, lips quirking up. “I don’t know about Eren. Maybe not. We haven’t all hung out together since August. I heard Levi leave early this morning, he probably went for a run or something so we shouldn’t wait for him.”

Historia came back a few minutes later, wearing an MIT sweatshirt over her jeans. She sat down on the couch to slip on a pair of sandals. 

“You ready, hon?”

“Yeah, the car’s outside.” Armin slipped a hand into hers and they walked out of the apartment door together, Mikasa following behind.

 

 

 

 

They arrived at their destination a few minutes later, an address on Memorial Drive overlooking the river. It was a building Armin had vaguely noticed as being under construction on his infrequent jogs, and Erwin was waiting for them downstairs, looking self-congratulatory.

“What do you think?” he asked them.

“Did you _buy_ the _building?”_ Historia asked, wide-eyed.

“Well--no,” Erwin said, slightly deflated. “But we’re leasing it. This is going to be the new headquarters of the Survey Corp.”

He led them inside the building--it was locked and the lobby was dark, but his key card let them in without trouble.

“I didn’t realize you were looking to expand this much,” Armin said, impressed. Like the building they lived in, it was very modern--but whereas Levi had chosen the apartment because he liked the incongruity of the modern Italian palazzo-style among the Victorian houses and apartment buildings--this building was the style he always thought of as a little smug and overdesigned. A little like Erwin himself, he thought with a grin he tried to suppress.

“Well, we've only leased half the building," he admitted scrupulously. "They're still looking for another tenant. Levi?”

“I think he went for a run this morning.”

“Well, let me show you upstairs,” Erwin said. He gave them a tour of the place, pointing out the space for research labs, the slide (of course there would be a slide, Armin thought, and he wished Levi was here so they could have exchanged an eye-roll about it), the office suites, describing all the amenities. Historia was definitely impressed, trailing after him and asking questions. 

Erwin had been courting them both heavily since he’d shown up a few months earlier--he would have hired them now, before they’d even graduated, but Levi had discouraged that plan and he and Historia weren’t too keen on it anyway. They wanted to finish their degrees, and Historia was heavily considering grad school.

Armin could understand why anyone would want Historia--she was a brilliant biostatician and the SC was expanding heavily into the medical field. His own interests were a little more esoteric. He’d gotten into MIT on the strength of a half-jokey paper he’d written about the hypothetical spread of a worldwide zombie epidemic. It had been tongue-in-cheek, but the math to back it up had been real and the paper had gone viral. He’d made the national news--there was even, depressingly, a know-your-memes entry about him. 

It was a double-edged sword. He could have made a name for himself in statistics and epidemiology, but he couldn’t help wanting to do something _more_. But he was so closely linked with that one paper (he’d turned down a bunch of offers recently to do talks on it, at conferences but also _cons_ of all places…)

What he thought he really wanted to do was work for the government--the CIA, maybe. He was tired of boring and safe--he wanted adventure, he wanted to do something important. MIT was a good place to get noticed, and he’d been hopeful but he hadn’t been approached yet. Ironically, the one person he’d mentioned his ambitions to (he hadn’t even told Historia--she was hugely pacifist and it would have horrified her) was Levi, and he’d been appalled.

His response had been so profoundly negative that Armin was all but certain that Levi had once worked for the CIA or some other shadowy agency--something he’d suspected for a while but that Levi would never talk about. He doubted that even Erwin knew. Levi had met him in his start-up days, but Armin had done the math, and he knew there was a three-year discrepancy between the time Levi had left MIT and the time he'd started working at the first company where there was any record of him, a small software company in the Netherlands. He’d turned back up in the US a few months later, filed his first software patents, then been co-founder of a start-up that had sold for an enormous amount of money within a year.

Which was fine--people took stranger paths to success, especially in their circle. But that first software company was nothing--it wasn’t the kind of place you ended up working at if you’d been an MIT wunderkind. It was the kind of place you’d go if you were trying to be anonymous--or if no one else would hire you. Armin had hacked their servers out of curiosity once, and apart from their laughable security he’d found something odd--someone else had been there first, and removed all trace of Levi from their systems. Armin was very familiar with Levi’s code--like the man himself, it was elegant, sparse, and efficient. There should have been traces of it, even years later, but there weren’t.

Which meant either Levi hadn’t worked there and was lying about it (which he didn’t think was the case--he’d seen enough corroborating proof that it would have been almost impossible), or Levi _himself_ had hacked the website after he’d left, removing and replacing his own code. Of the two possibilities, knowing Levi he found the latter more believable. But why? It was a puzzle.

“And this is what I really brought you here to see,” Erwin said cheerfully. He ushered them out onto a balcony overlooking the river--it was large, curving out over the road below, and lined with glass doors. A spread of pastries and bagels and juice and champagne was laid out invitingly, and there were even binoculars on the chairs. Armin picked up one pair and walked to the edge of the balcony to examine the rowers on the river. The street below was lined with spectators already, cheering on the river-side. 

“Do you know anyone competing?” Mikasa asked, coming to stand behind him.

“Not really,” he said.

“Erwin’s already asked me if I’m thinking of going into corporate or patent law,” Mikasa said, amused.

Armin smiled at her. “He wants us all to come work for him. Levi says he wants to start recruiting heavily at colleges and he’s practicing on us.

“They got a lot of funding this year and they’re starting to go legit. That’s part of why Erwin’s been here so long. His last project almost fell apart because after Levi left to take his sabbatical all the other leads on the project quit--he had to beg Levi to pull it back together because so much is riding on it.”

“Damn,” Mikasa said, turning this over in her mind and putting it together with a few other things Levi had mentioned to her in passing. “Doesn’t seem like the best time to be leasing a fancy new building then.”

“I wonder what Levi’s going to say.”

“You don’t think he knows about it?”

Armin snorted. “Considering how he browbeat him out of that jet he wanted to buy I’m going to guess not.”

Mikasa pulled her phone out and sighed. “Can you text him? I tried, it’s not going through.”

“Levi?”

“Yeah…”

Armin pulled his phone out, and texted, _Hey you coming?_ to Levi--then frowned. It said ‘sending…’ endlessly--an error message it rarely gave here in the city, and that he typically only saw on occasional camping or skiing trips. “It’s not--” he started to say.

“Huh,” Historia said, interrupting whatever Erwin had been saying to her. She walked over to join them, peering into the distance. “You guys hear that?”

Then Armin did--sirens, and they were getting louder.

For a moment they all stared into the distance together--looking at the skyline of the city, searching for the cause of whatever had happened.

“My internet’s not working,” Mikasa said suddenly.

“Uh--huh. That’s weird. The internet for the building is down too,” Erwin said, poking at his phone with a frown.

“Can anybody get through?”

“I can’t. Fuck. You think it’s a terrorist attack?”

“Jesus.”

“Is there a landline?” Mikasa said, turning to Erwin. 

“Uh--the phones aren’t connected yet, so--”

“What about the lobby--the security desk?”

“Oh, maybe--”

“Hang on, Levi just texted me,” Erwin said, sounding relieved. “He wants to know who’s here.”

“How are you getting through?”

“We have a private communication satellite,” Erwin said. “What?” when they stared at him.

“Ask him if Eren’s with him.”

“He says Eren’s all right--he says to stay here.”

“Does he know what’s going on?”

Erwin frowned. “He just says--stay here. He’s on his way.”

The sirens were definitely getting louder, and they looked up again uneasily--thinking of all the unlikely things--shootings, bombings--or something worse?

“What about a tv?” Armin said suddenly. “Is there a tv inside?”

“I’m not sure--and if the cable’s not hooked up--”

“If the internet was working before, the cable might be,” Armin said, with more confidence than he felt. He felt strangely bereft--untethered--without his phone. As if the world had suddenly gotten realer and more dangerous. “Let’s go look,” he said again. _We should get out of the open,_ he was thinking, but he didn’t want to upset them.

They found a tv in the second floor reception area. Armin didn’t see a remote for it, but he found the power button on the side and it turned on right away, to one of the cable news stations. For a moment he was relieved.

Then he looked up, and saw what the others were seeing.

“That--that--that can’t be real. That has to be a hoax,” Mikasa said.

“Armin, turn the channel,” Historia said flatly.

Armin did. He kept turning them. Every channel was the same. Everywhere--cities all over the world--were being attacked by something impossible.

Giants. Naked humanoid beings--attacking people. Eating people.

“It’s a hoax,” Erwin said, repeating Mikasa's words. No one answered him. For almost an hour they watched the news--a haphazard projection of images, too many to follow, but always the same no matter what city they were in. Violence and death and mayhem. It was impossible. The news anchors sounded frankly terrified. The screen showed militaries being deployed against the giants--and Armin gasped as he saw one of the giant beings smash a tank flat under its foot on shakey cell phone video. They stopped speaking for a while--they were all frantically refreshing their phones, hoping for a text to go through, or the internet to come back on.

Then as cool as anything Levi walked in. He was wearing what looked like climbing gear over his clothes--harness slung low over his hips. With a start Armin realized what they were--then he stared at Levi.

“Where’s Eren?” Mikasa demanded.

“He’s safe,” Levi said. “We’ll meet up with him. Right now we need to go.”

“Levi, it’s not real,” Erwin begged--pointing at the tv screen.

“It’s real,” Levi said, giving the tv only the most cursory glance. “Come on.” He unclipped Erwin’s key pass from his shirt--Erwin could only blink at him.

“Where are we going?”

“The roof. I chartered a helicopter.” He slung a bag over his shoulder--Armin hadn’t noticed it at first.

“What’s that?”

“Your breakfast. You left it unattended on the balcony.”

“Wait--” Erwin said suddenly. “Levi, how did you get in here? Did you _climb_ up?”

“The doors were locked downstairs,” Levi said mildly. “You didn’t answer my texts. You left the balcony unlocked.”

They were moving--drawn uncomprehendingly in Levi’s wake. “How did this happen?” Armin said, almost a wail.

“Nobody knows,” Levi said simply. He was the only one of them that was really calm--they sensed that and drew close to him, looking for the security that until hours ago they’d taken completely for granted.

Levi flashed the pass at the elevator, and pressed the R button, flashing the pass again.

“Good thinking, getting a place with a chopper pad,” he said drily to Erwin, who stared back at him blankly.

Just as he’d said--like magic--a helicopter was there, a young pilot looking nervously at them. Levi waved them all in--saw them all seated before going to talk to the pilot in the front. They couldn’t hear what the two of them were saying over the noise, but moments later the craft was in the air, moving upwards. 

“Oh my god,” Historia said, putting a hand over her mouth. Armin turned to look out of the window. He saw what she saw--what they could all see now. There were giants in Boston--hundreds of them, moving fast.


	3. Chapter 3

After he saw the others safely strapped into their seats (looking around them shell-shocked, with expressions that were gut-wrenchingly familiar to him) Levi slid into the seat next to the pilot. He pulled the other headset on and spoke to the young man as they took off.

“What’s your name?”

“Connie, sir.”

“Connie, huh? I was thinking you looked more like a Steve.”

Connie gave him a strained smile. “It’s short for Constantine. Kind of a mouthful, though.”

“I see.”

“Sir, what’s going on?”

Levi leaned back in his seat. 

“You cut communication with your employers?”

“Yes,” the young man said, mystified. “You offered me two million in cash--that’s worth getting fired over.”

“I suppose you understand why I made you the offer.”

“I figured--whatever was happening you were afraid someone else would take priority…”

“And leave us stranded here. Exactly.”

“Is it a terrorist attack?”

“Look down. Carefully.”

Connie did--they were in the air now, gaining altitude. He stared for a moment at the city below, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

“What--” he said.

“Think of them,” Levi said slowly, “as a cross between Godzilla, and cannibals. They’re everywhere. Every major city in the world. No one knows what they are or where they came from.”

“I’m dreaming,” Connie said slowly.

“No,” Levi said. 

Connie gave him a sharp look then. “Where did you serve?”

Levi gave him a twisted smile. “Chernobyl,” he said without explanation. “You?”

“Afghanistan. Two tours.”

“You don’t look old enough.”

“I’ve got a young face,” Connie responded immediately. “Sir, you’ve seen these things before.”

“In a nightmare,” Levi said. 

Connie stared straight ahead, focusing on the path of the helicopter, the controls, letting the familiarity of the motions soothe him. He was thinking fast.

“I’m guessing you don’t have my two million in cash at our destination.”

“Actually, I do. More than that, as a matter of fact, but I somehow doubt it will be worth very much by the time you’ve got it in your hands. Though whatever I have, you’re welcome to it.”

Connie didn’t reply; he wasn’t stupid, and he was thinking very hard and very fast about every video game he’d ever played and every disaster movie he’d ever seen.

“When we get to where we’re going, you’re welcome to leave,” Levi said, “with the cash, of course. You can turn your radio back on--if it’s working, I’m sure there will be plenty of jobs lined up for you.”

“You saw this coming.”

“I had about a five minute head start. I made the most of it.”

“But you don’t know what these things are?” Connie said desperately.

“No one does,” Levi said implacably, and Connie’s heart sank when he realized he was telling the truth. “But they’re tough to kill. Maybe even impossible.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got another option for me, if I don’t turn around and leave.”

“You can stay,” Levi said. “I think it’ll be safer where we’re going than most places. But I won’t keep you. This thing might blow over in a few days, and you’d be as safe with us as you’d be anywhere. But it might not. And if it doesn’t…”

“If it doesn’t?”

“Then we need to think about survival.”

There was a long pause then. Suddenly, Connie said, “My family--!”

“Are you married?”

“No--my mom and sister, they live in Ohio--”

“You can try to call them but I doubt you’ll get through,” Levi said. “The systems seem to be overloaded--or they’ve been tampered with.”

“I can’t just--”

“This isn’t a scenario we’ve ever experienced before, as a species,” Levi said. Connie was amazed by his calm. “This is an extinction level event. If your family are alive, it’s unlikely they will be for long. And even less likely that you’ll be able to do anything for them. But I’m not telling you what to do--I just want you to understand what you’re dealing with.”

Connie didn’t reply. Their flight path took them over towns and cities and highways and forests--the roads were clogged with cars. And everywhere he saw people he saw those things--those horrifying naked giants. They--

He looked away. “I can’t believe this is real.”

 

 

 

 

 

They landed in a deserted clearing in the Berkshires. It was some distance from the closest town, and they hadn’t seen any of the monsters as they’d approached their destination.

Connie landed the helicopter and Levi got out immediately--the others followed. 

“Hurry up,” he called back to them. “I don’t think there are any around, but I don’t want to be wrong about that.”

He was heading towards an odd-looking building--Armin looked at it bewildered for a moment. He hadn’t known where they were going and there’d been no opportunity to ask--he’d been guessing maybe some kind of military base. But this wasn’t a military base--it was a weird mish-mash of styles, as if a resort director and a doomsday prepper and Tony Stark had all gotten together and argued about what kind of summer camp to build. And then run out of money before they could finish it.

“Hey--” Armin said, jogging after him. Levi was paused at the door of what looked like some kind of bunker, and Armin goggled at it for a moment. Levi typed in an access code.

“Is this--”

“Yeah. This is the place I was telling you about.”

Levi had mentioned buying a ‘camp’ out in the Berkshires back in the summer--he’d been going out one or two weekends a month to work on it. Armin had been picturing some kind of cabin on a lake…

The others had all caught up to them, and Mikasa said, “Where’s Eren? Is he here?”

“Come on inside,” Levi repeated. “We can talk downstairs.”

The lights came on automatically, and Armin whipped his head around, though there wasn’t much to take in. Just a sealed concrete corridor, with an elevator at the end. 

Levi pressed the call button, and they rode down--what felt like a surprisingly far way.

Erwin gave him a wry look. “And I’m the survivalist nutbag?” he asked.

“It’s more practical than your damn jet. Cheaper, too. I got a good price on it because the guy who built it--and he _was_ a survivalist nutbag--ran out of money and had to stop working on it.”

“You bought this place with Hanji,” Erwin said suddenly. “Is she here?”

“I fucking hope so,” Levi said. The elevator dinged and they got out. “She wasn’t answering her damn phone.”

There was more to see down here, and Armin looked back and forth rapidly--lots of boxes everywhere, like someone was still unpacking, what looked like some kind of lab, and conference rooms--

“Go in there, and I’ll tell you what I know,” Levi said, ushering them into one of the rooms. “I’ll be there in a second.” He shoved the bag--which contained the remains of their breakfast--at Armin. “Eat something.”

He disappeared--coming back a moment later and walking around the length of the conference table as they were still getting settled.

“Levi--” Mikasa started to say again. “Ow! What the fuck?” she grabbed at her neck, staring wrathfully at her cousin. Levi was holding a hypo in his hand. “What the fuck did you just do to me?”

“It’s a sedative. Sit down, Mikasa.”

“What--”

Levi put his phone into a little holder in the center of the table, and suddenly a projection of his home screen flashed on the wall. 

“Photos,” he said aloud, and a photo appeared on the screen. It looked like a warzone, and Armin wondered why Levi could be showing them pictures of this, if it had something to do with where the monsters had come from. Then he realized--it was Boston. Taken that morning. And though he couldn’t place it the location looked familiar.

“No,” Mikasa said slowly. She turned to look at Levi. “You said--”

Oh. It was Eren’s apartment building--what was left of it. That’s why it had looked so familiar.

“I pinged his phone,” Levi said with a hint of sorrow. “It was in the wreckage. I’m sorry, Mikasa.”

“No! You said he was fine, you said he’d be _here!”_

“You would have died if you’d stayed behind. I tried, Mikasa. I’m sorry.”

Mikasa was wailing now--sounds Armin had never heard her make before, and he turned to grab her shoulders. She was taller than him, and stronger--a black belt in martial arts that he barely even knew the names of--but she collapsed sobbing into his arms. She felt terrifyingly fragile. 

“Are you sure?” Armin asked desperately, staring at the projected screen.

“Scroll photos,” Levi said, and the phone obediently began moving through its cache of pictures. There were a few from this angle, then a few zoomed out--showing dozens of the monsters walking through the neighborhood with those inane grins.

Grabbing people. Eating them.

“If he was killed when the building collapsed he’ll be one of the lucky ones,” Levi said. 

“How can you _say_ that?” Mikasa gasped furiously.

“Because I’ve seen what these things do to people,” Levi said bleakly. He walked to the head of the table. “End photos,” he said, and the phone obediently returned back to the home screen.

“I’m sorry, Mikasa,” he said again. “I’m sorry for lying to you. But I’m not sorry for saving your life. He wouldn’t have wanted you to die for nothing.”

Mikasa glared at him, with Armin’s arm still wrapped around her but she didn’t respond. 

“If there’s even a chance--”

“There isn’t,” he told her gently. “Even if I’d brought you all back with me to help me dig through the rubble--we’d never have made it across town. And if we had, those things would have grabbed us as soon as we were standing still.”

“There’s firefighters! Police! The army!”

“Mikasa,” Armin said quietly, speaking up for the first time. She turned her tear-stained face to look at him. “I don’t think any of them can help us now.”

“Wh--”

“These things aren’t localized. They’re everywhere. You saw the news. They’re all over the world…” He looked at Levi. “What are they? Aliens? Some...I don’t know, some insane fucking science project run amok?”

“We don’t know,” Levi said again.

“But you’ve seen them before,” the young pilot said, and they turned to look at him. He cleared his throat. “Um, hi,” he said. “Connie. Nice to meet you...I guess.” Turning back to Levi, he said, “I’d like to hear what you _do_ know, before making up my mind.”

“Levi,” Erwin said, shocked. “Is that true?”

Levi was still standing. He braced a fist on the table, staring down at the polished tabletop, then he looked up to meet their eyes. “I don’t know what they are,” he said. “But yes, I’ve seen them before.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a personal note:
> 
>  
> 
> Maybe I'll delete this...maybe not. But if you're reading this story then it means you're a fun person and I like you ;)
> 
> If you've ever talked to me in the comments you may have seen me hint at the fact that I've had a rough couple of years. Writing here is an outlet for me when I'm having a bad day. If you see me update three or four days in a row it's probably because my life is in the toilet again, and I'm doing it because I'm desperately trying to bring something positive into it. I ask myself 'is there anything I can do to salvage this day?' And a lot of the time it's writing a story, or updating a story, to make someone happy.
> 
> You. Yes, that's right, you. I'm not writing this note for pity or sympathy. I'm writing it to say THANK YOU. Yes, YOU, the person reading this, I do mean you. It's not just for comments (though those are awesome, and yes please all the comments). It's because I think maybe I can do this thing to make someone else a little bit happy...
> 
> And you know what? It always works. I don't want to be having a bad day, but I am. I will get through it because I'm tough. But it wasn't the worst day, because I did this thing, and this thing made someone else--at least one person--a little bit happier. So thank you--YOU--for reading.

“I don’t know how to start,” Levi said. He looked pale and gray around the edges. He sank into the chair and looked up, as if he was still seeing the monsters above their heads somewhere--tearing the world apart.

“When I was at MIT--no, further back than that. I stayed with my uncle for a few years after my mother died. I always thought he was just some street level thug, but he wasn’t. I found out later--after all this happened. He'd been a black ops agent--not anything officially sanctioned. Real shady shit. When he left that he worked as a consultant, an informant, a mercenary.

"He walked out one day and just never came back...I ended up in foster care." 

“I always did well in school and I had a good sob story so I went to MIT. The beginning of my third year I was approached by someone. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’d worked with my uncle once...I guess for that reason he thought I’d be a good choice for the project he was working on.”

Levi grimaced, and he looked at them all. They were staring back at him, with various expressions of unease and curiosity. “I’m doing a shit job of explaining this.”

“It’s fine Levi,” Erwin said.

“I’ve never told anyone about it before,” he said. “I’ve spent the last ten years trying to fucking forget it.”

“You were recruited,” Erwin prompted gently.

“I thought it was the CIA. Yeah, I know,” he said, giving Armin a meaningful look. “It wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out until later. It was a very off-the-books operation. The guy in charge told us to call him Smith--” here he looked at Erwin ironically. “Not a relative of yours, I don’t think. He knew everything about us, but we didn’t know anything about him. We didn’t even know who we were working for.

“He discouraged us from talking to each other about our pasts--he said it was for our own protection. We weren’t allowed to use our last names, just first ones. But I put some things together. For the most part everyone he recruited was an orphan, or estranged from their families. Most of them had backgrounds like mine. It meant if we went missing no one would come looking for us.

“I was young and stupid. He was offering me a lot of money for a few months’ work--he said there was plenty of opportunity for advancement, or I could return to MIT later if I wanted. And I was curious. He was good at what he did--pulling levers. Making you feel like you were part of something…

“We spent some time training, and then we left. Smith didn’t tell us where we were going, but we saw signs when we landed.

“He took us to Chernobyl. It wasn’t ground zero,” he said, when he saw how they were all looking at him. “It was quite beautiful, actually. They’ve cordoned off an enormous area and let it return to nature. And we weren’t there long enough to be harmed by the radiation. We thought--I don’t know what we thought. Everything happened quickly then--there wasn’t time to think. There was a primitive base set up, and we all went to our positions, the way we’d trained. Then we waited. There were about a hundred of us. Some of them I’d gotten to be friends with.

“I didn’t see Smith again. I don’t know if he died or escaped. Though with how much time has passed, I’d say he’s probably dead. No one’s ever come after me.”

Erwin had known Levi for years--he’d seen flickers of emotion in his friend from time to time. Irritation, amusement, even pleasure--especially when he pulled off some particularly impressive feat of coding. But for the most part Levi was a closed book--a true stoic. He’d never seen Levi looking like this, this expression of true horror as he recalled his past.

“The last thing I heard Smith say,” Levi said, “was ‘Release the Titans.’ None of us knew what that meant. Then these monsters appeared, running out of the woods. They were--” He shook his head. “As big as houses. Bigger. You’ve seen them now. They broke through our perimeter like it was nothing. We had all the guns you could want--for a moment nobody moved, but once they started killing people all hell broke loose.

“None of it mattered. I didn’t see a single shot slow them down. We started throwing grenades, and one of them went down. But then it got up again. I saw its leg get blown off. It regrew it.

“And I’m sorry,” he said, looking up at them. “I don’t remember what happened after that. I know there weren’t any survivors, apart from me. I checked. Then I remember walking along a road, alone. Eventually someone picked me up, gave me a ride somewhere. I spent the next three years trying to forget what had happened. I never really did, but I pushed it down…”

“What happened to the monsters? The Titans?” Historia said.

“I don’t know,” Levi said.

“They must have been killed though, somehow.”

“Or recaptured,” Armin said.

Levi spread his hands-- _I don’t know._

“I’d never believe it if we hadn’t just seen--what we’d just seen,” Erwin muttered. “You never...found out, anything else?”

Levi shook his head. "Not apart from what I've told you," he said heavily.

“You think they were...people? Transformed by the radiation?” Mikasa said dubiously. Her words were slurred, and she’d become oddly tranquil during the telling of Levi’s story. Armin remembered the drug Levi had given her and wondered if they should get her to lie down somewhere.

“No,” Historia said decidedly. “Radiation doesn’t work that way. They probably brought them there because it was out of the way--they wouldn’t be accidentally seen by anyone else.”

“Yes,” Levi said. “That’s what I think, too. That they were keeping them there because of the remoteness--because of how unlikely it was that anyone would trespass there.”

“Then what _are_ they?”

“Impossible,” Historia said thoughtfully. “They can’t be something that came from this world, they don’t operate the way anything else does. To sustain something that big like that you’d need a completely different biology.”

“So they _are_ aliens?” Connie said, bewildered.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Probably they’re from some alternate dimension.”

“You can’t believe that,” Connie said.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “You have a better explanation for why giant humanoid monsters suddenly started attacking simultaneously all over the world?”

“Armin,” Levi said hollowly.

“Huh?”

“Your paper.” At Armin’s blank look, he clarified, “The Zombie one. What does the spread of outbreak look like?”

“What parameters?”

“Simultaneous all over the world.”

Armin exhaled slowly. “Well--I didn’t calculate that specifically. But if we take it past the point of pandemic status then--if the outbreak isn’t contained within a few days…” he trailed off, understanding what Levi was getting at.

“What?” Connie asked him.

“There’d be a 99.5% mortality rate within a week,” Armin said. “But that’s--I mean, there are resources, there’s militaries all over the world. And this isn’t a disease...”

“They’re attracted to population centers,” Levi said. “Wherever people are clustered together that’s where they’ll go. There might be isolated pockets of survivors, but that’s the best we can hope for.”

“How do you know that?”

“They were all clustered in the cities and on the highways,” Erwin said slowly. “I noticed as we were flying--once we got out into the woods I didn’t see any.”

“They. Eat. People,” Mikasa said. She laughed. 

“Do you have tv here?” Armin asked.

“There’s no cable. We have satellite. Wait here.” He stood up.

“Mikasa should lie down somewhere,” Historia said.

“I’ll show you where,” he said. “Come on.” 

Levi came back alone a few minutes later, carrying a cardboard box. He opened it, and began pulling out phones. “These are preloaded with access to our telecom satellite,” he said. “Even if all the cell networks go down they’ll still be able to communicate with each other. And they’re loaded with a few apps for this place already.” He gave one to Armin. “That button will bring up the satellite tv. There’s a projector in here, and a couple of the other rooms. And you can watch on the phone.”

Armin took the phone but made no move to turn it on. “Did you know this was going to happen?”

Levi sighed. “No. Of course not. But I could never stop looking over my shoulder...I could have spent the rest of my life waiting to see them again.” He grimaced.

“You knew to charter the helicopter--what happened this morning?”

“I don’t know. I was on my way back to the apartment to get cleaned up before coming over to see the new building. And then--” he shook his head.

“You saw one?”

“No. I didn’t. But I _knew._ I never forgot that fear. And suddenly it was back. I knew they were here. I called the helicopter, and I got patched through to the pilot.” He nodded at Connie. “Then I went to try to find Eren. But it was too late.”

Armin looked at the phone, swallowing hard. Somehow in the middle of everything he’d forgotten Eren, for a whole second or two.

“It is strange, looking back,” Levi said quietly. “But we bought those patents last year...we needed a place to work on them, and then this place came up for sale. It seemed perfect--quiet, secluded, but only a few hours drive from the city. Space for Hanji to have a lab, even.”

“What patents?” Connie asked.

“It’s a kind of recreational device,” Erwin said, “that lets you fly on wires--kind of a cross between rock climbing and a jet pack. Good way to break your neck.”

“Or get close enough to kill those things,” Levi said quietly.

“So you do think they can be killed.”

“Not only that,” Levi said. “I think I killed them. I just don’t remember how.”

 

 

 

 

Levi disappeared on an unspecified errand, but the rest of them settled in to watch the news. It was unrelenting--but also uninformative. At this point Armin thought they knew more about what was happening than the media did. News anchors nervously repeated entreaties to their audiences to shelter where they could--in basements or underground if possible. They gave updates to the world militaries’--united, for once, at least in theory--efforts to contain the monsters. These seemed unsuccessful. They reported that the president had fled Washington on Air Force One, while the city was being destroyed.

Like all cities, everywhere. Armin tried to calculate how many of the creatures there could be--millions? Was that possible?

He’d tried to call his parents, dozens of times. Most of the calls hadn’t gone through, but he'd left a few voicemails that he was starting to doubt they would ever hear. Historia had tried to call her mother, but she’d stopped after a while. 

There was internet, thanks to the satellite uplink, but huge swathes of it intermittently went out. 

At some point Erwin looked at his phone and saw that it was after one in the morning. “Maybe we should try to sleep,” he said.

“Levi never came back.”

“I’ll text him,” Erwin started to say, but then they heard the elevator at the end of the hall ding and two sets of footsteps coming towards them.

For a moment Armin’s heart gave an irrational leap--but then he saw Levi was walking with a tall woman, her shaggy auburn hair tied up in a ponytail. He tried to beat back his disappointment.

“This is Hanji,” Levi said. “She’s got presents for you.”

“Dr. Hanji,” Erwin said.

Hanji made a wave of dismissal-- “Just Hanji is fine,” she said. She held up a bag. “I’ve got some sedatives, if you’re interested.”

Erwin sighed. “I suppose we might as well. I’m glad you’re all right, Hanji. Where were you?”

“Visiting the neighbors. We can talk about it later.”

“Did you make up your mind yet, Connie?” Levi asked. “You’re welcome to stay.”

“I haven’t been able to get through to my family at all,” Connie said dully. “Doesn’t seem like any of us have.” He stared at the tv screen. “Seeing that...I don’t know where the fuck I’d go. Yeah. I’ll stay for now, if you don’t mind. I’ll take some sedatives too. Load me up, Doc.”

“There aren’t really bedrooms set up but we have some cots,” Hanji said. “The previous owner left a lot of stuff behind. Ironic, when you think about it, that he sold it right before something like this happening…”

Hanji distributed doses of the drug, then pointed them in the direction of the make-shift dormitory. Levi stayed behind, looking at the tv screen. He was still there when she came back.

“Do you want anything?” 

“No,” he said. “I’m staying up. I’ve got a lot of work to do.” He turned off the tv.

“Did you get the drones set up along the perimeter?”

“Yes. And I got the traps set up. With any luck we’ll catch you one of these things to use for target practice.”

“Do you really think we can do this, Levi?”

He shrugged resignedly. “What choice do we have?”

Hanji propped her head up in her hand and studied him. “Something’s bothering you.”

“Beyond the apocalypse, you mean?” he deadpanned.

“Is it because you’ve seen these before?”

“Yes,” he said. He picked up his jacket from where it was carefully folded over the back of a chair. “That boy died today. Mikasa’s cousin. I couldn’t get to him in time. It was the same as before.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I survived,” Levi said. “None of the others did. My survival means something. I have to make it mean something.” He put the jacket on.

“You’re going out? Is that a good idea?” she asked worriedly.

He smiled at her. “I’ve got some shopping to do,” he said.


	5. Chapter 5

He was working in his room when the intercom buzzed. There were metal parts scattered across his desk--he was wrist-deep in screws and sheet metal.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Levi,” John’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re starting now.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

He got up and opened the door to his room, letting it swing gently closed behind him. They’d rapidly expanded the ‘camp’ in the months following Day Zero--what they had started calling the day the Titans had first attacked. The day they’d first come here.

There was a small farm not far down the road from them--their closest neighbors. Hanji had gone there immediately to try to convince John and his wife Robin to come into the safety of the camp, but they’d refused. They’d set out on their own the next day to search for their families and a week later John had come back--alone.

John met him when he got off the elevator-- “Everyone’s here,” he said in an undertone. He was a tall, dark-skinned man with close cropped hair. He’d been a marine and then an investment banker before he and his wife had decided to go full hipster and start their own family farm. He hadn’t spoken of his wife since coming back, but he still wore his wedding ring.

Levi nodded. They walked into the conference room and Levi looked at the familiar faces around the table--they’d divvied up the work of running the camp haphazardly at first, but it had turned into a regular system. They had weekly meetings so that everyone could check in and update the others on their progress.

They’d found survivors on scavenging missions--but fewer and fewer as time had passed. Jean was an engineer--they had found him running the closest power plant almost single-handedly. Sasha had been a kindergarten teacher, and they’d given her charge of the half-dozen orphaned children they’d found. There were a dozen other adults here as well, but Historia, Erwin, Armin, Levi, Connie, Hanji, Mikasa, Jean, Sasha, and John had been the first, and they formed the camp’s leadership.

When Levi and John were seated Hanji stood up and cleared her throat. The lights in the room darkened and she turned the projector on, showing the diagrams they’d put together.

“This is the area that needs to be cut,” she said, pointing to the back of the Titan’s neck. “This is how we kill them.”

 

 

 

 

Levi picked up a heavy brass compass that was lying on his desk. He stretched out the two points, and then he gently pressed the sharp point of the caliper to his cheek and closed his eyes, letting the weight of it sit comfortably in his hand.

It was the kind of ostentatious object he liked; it served no practical purpose in a world where the digital had long ago surpassed the analog. Though whether it had ever served a practical purpose was doubtful--it was larger and more decorative than most dividers, with the image of a ship stamped right into the brass. He’d bought it years ago at a marine antique store in Boston.

He still thought about Eren. He had his own bookshelves out here at the camp and he’d turned his copies of Homer and Aeschylus spine side in.

What did it matter? One boy he’d barely known, when he’d known and lost so many. But he knew. The people that had been kind to him always left a mark, their inevitable absence hurting deeply. Eren had turned around almost immediately, changing from a sullen adolescent to...something else.

He thought he knew what he was to Eren, what he had been. Older brother, drill sergeant, father, friend, confidante, comrade, all rolled into one convenient package. He'd provided something Eren had been desperately missing since the death of his parents.

Levi could understand that. He could think about Gregory and still be almost in tears, twenty-five years later.

He and his mother had lived in a housing project, and Gregory had lived down the hall. He was odd--probably, if Levi had met him again now out of context he’d have found him irritating.

But to a lonely boy Gregory had been a wizard. During long hot summer days he was left alone he’d wander down the hall and Gregory would invite him in. He had children and grandchildren of his own (he showed their pictures to Levi) but they never visited. He liked Levi’s quiet serious company. He had plenty of interesting things in his apartment--most of it junk, probably, but as a child Levi had thought it was wonderful. Globes and encyclopedias, naval compasses, telescopes, porcelain cats and cups and vases, hardcover Reader’s Digest novels, puzzles, duck-handled umbrellas--to Levi it seemed the height of luxury, as though he’d been transported to some bazaar in an old Arabian fairy tale, not a shabby apartment in a run-down concrete housing project.

When he came over Gregory always asked him what he wanted to eat--

“Cake? Cookies? I have some ice cream here. You want lemonade--”

And he’d go down, listing almost every item of food he had in the house while Levi hugged himself, overwhelmed by the abundance of _choice._ Decades later iced lemon sandwich cookies still seemed like the height of hospitality to him.

When it was time to go home Gregory always let him choose something to take--once a pair of heavy binoculars that he used to look out of his bedroom window, waiting for his mother to come home, once a Sherlock Holmes novel that had been far too difficult for him, but that he’d doggedly read through anyway, sometimes one of the little porcelain figurines.

When his mother found them she’d scold him mightily--almost the only times he could ever remember her being angry--and take the offending object back down the hall to Gregory’s apartment, dragging Levi beside her. Levi never minded this--it was part of the ritual. He had a childish fantasy that they would go and live in Gregory’s wonderful apartment someday, that his mother could become Gregory’s daughter, that he could become Gregory’s grandson.

She’d knock at the door and when Gregory would answer, friendly wrinkled face peering out at her from behind his eyeglasses, she'd stammer an apology and try to give whatever it was back. He’d demur, inviting them in. His mother was too polite to refuse and over tea or soda or coffee she’d wind up telling him much more about her problems than she’d intended. Gregory was always sympathetic--and Levi had realized much later, surprisingly tactful for a man of his age and experience. 

Levi would play by himself in the background while they talked at the kitchen table. Eventually his mother would be calm. She'd thank him, and say they had to leave--with no further mention of the gift, and without the ban on future presents that she always threatened.

Gregory would wink at him when they left.

He had passed away when Levi was seven. Though he’d asked his mother, they hadn’t gone to the funeral. Levi had watched the grown children come, complaining and griping as they hauled their father’s precious junk away, searching futilely for anything of value.

His mother had taken him to pay their respects, at least. She’d held his hand as they walked down the hall, and introduced herself to the sour-faced daughter and the doughy, balding son.

“Gregory was very nice to Levi,” she’d told them, stroking her son’s hair. “I know Levi will miss him very much.”

Levi had nodded, averting his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to see the room in shambles--dismantled. He wanted to remember it the way it had been.

“I liked him,” he said out loud, not to them but to Gregory, who might still be listening somewhere. “He told me stories. He gave me cookies. He was nice.”

The daughter regarded them almost with impatience, but the son had been touched--he’d invited Levi to take anything he wanted, as a memento. Levi had gone to one of the curio shelves--his hands grasping an object there without looking. 

“Thank you,” he murmured.

His mother drew him away; they departed. Behind them he could hear the siblings’ bickering through the door.

“What is that?” his mother had asked curiously.

“A naval compass,” he told her.

“What does it do?”

“You use it to measure distances on charts. When you’re sailing.”

She smiled. “Are you going to go sailing, my love?”

“Yes. Someday.” But the sharp points could serve as a weapon too.

Gregory had also had the distinction of being the only man he’d ever seen be kind to his mother. He’d lost those dividers, at some foster home or one of the hovels he’d lived in later on with Kenny. But he’d gotten another pair--and then another. 

He hadn’t had any with him when he’d faced the Titans, that first time, or in the terrible years that had followed. 

When he’d decided to come back to the states he’d flown into Boston first, somehow needing to see the place again though he hadn't intended to stay. He wasn't the person he'd been before, and though he could have renewed his scholarship at MIT he knew California was where the money was. He had a lead on a promising project with an old contact, and his own designs that he'd frantically been working on in his spare time since getting sober. He’d taken the T into the city from the airport and gotten off at Downtown to wander, feeling jittery in a way he hadn’t since kicking heroin. He’d walked at random, eventually winding up by the waterfront beside the highway that bisected the city, and on the corner waiting to cross the street he’d noticed the store behind him.

Fifteen minutes later he’d walked out again with the calipers a solid, heavy weight in his pocket. He’d have to check them in his luggage when he flew on to San Francisco, but now the prospect of another continental flight--and that of reinventing himself, yet again--seemed less daunting.

His door chimed. He rolled his office chair over to it, and opened it to Erwin, looking bemusedly at him.

“What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the calipers.

“My lucky charm,” Levi said, rolling back over to the desk.

“Levi, I’m sorry about--”

“Haven’t we already said all there is to say? We voted. You won.”

Erwin sighed. “It isn’t about me winning. It’s about all of us winning.”

“I’ve _forgotten_ more about programming drones than Armin will ever know,” Levi said. “And no one else here has the technical know how to work on a project like the one you’re proposing.”

“I can help--”

“You’re a manager Erwin, your code is shit.” 

Erwin sank down into a chair. “Levi, if we pursue your plan, what happens if you get killed? Our human capital is our most precious resource right now.”

“Exactly. And my plan gives us the best chance of preserving human life. I’m telling you what you want to do can’t be done.”

“There are options we haven’t pursued--I think explosives give us a good chance--”

“Where are you going to get explosives, Erwin? Or metal, or machine parts, or circuit boards, or _anything?_ We can’t just get it all Fed-Ex’d from China anymore. There’s a limit to what we can do here, and we’ve _reached_ it. I don’t have enough raw materials to build the drones we need now, never mind wasting resources on years of R &D that might go nowhere.”

“There’s military bases--”

“Which are likely to have been raided already, or full of dangerous survivors, and despite what you seem to think they don’t just leave military drones lying around saying ‘please steal me’. Most of them are probably on carriers in the middle of the ocean--assuming they haven’t been sunk--and dropping bombs on the Titans doesn’t work anyway. You heard what Hanji said--precision cuts, high accuracy and speed. We can’t build drones that have the force to do that.”

“Armin--”

“Armin is one man. It would take a team of scientists ten years to do what you’re asking--and that’s _if_ we had unlimited resources at our disposal. We don’t.”

“I agree, it’s a difficult challenge. But you’ve already got a machine shop set up here--there’s enough high-tech industry in the state that we can scavenge what we need to build what we need.”

Levi shook his head. “You haven’t been out there. One, the highways are clogged with abandoned cars. We can’t move heavy equipment without a trailer, we can’t move a trailer until we deal with the cars.”

“We still have the helicopter--”

“Which isn’t big enough to transport the equipment we need, and good luck finding a functioning transport chopper lying around. Two, there are still Titans everywhere. Occasionally we even get them out here--and if it weren’t for Mikasa and Hanji and John and I using the maneuver gear to take them out, we’d be trapped here, until they came and broke the _walls_ down to get at us We don’t have drones to deal with even that--never mind the number of Titans there are in the cities, where the equipment we’re looking for is likely to be.”

“Then we use what we have at our disposal--and what we _can_ scavenge--to engineer a solution.”

“Good luck with that,” Levi said, turning away back to his work desk.

Erwin sighed again, running a hand through his blond hair. “Levi, there aren’t enough of us that we can afford to fight with each other.”

“I’m not fighting with you. I’m telling you why you’re wrong and your solution won’t work.”

“The maneuver gear itself is a hazard. We can’t ask people to risk their lives using it--never mind going up against Titans. Not everyone is as athletic as you are.”

“Then we train them to use it. Without it they’re defenseless. We’re defenseless.”

“Once we get going on this problem we’re going to be able to solve it,” Erwin insisted. “We can do this without the loss of more lives.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

Erwin gave him a long look, part-sorrowful, part-sympathetic. It was the sympathy that made him uneasy. “Levi…” he said slowly. “Are you all right?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t want to lose you because of some...misplaced sense of machismo--”

“Erwin, please,” he said impatiently. “I have vices, but _that_ isn’t one of them.”

“Then what is it? We may disagree on this, but I’m still your friend, Levi. I care about you. And…”

“What?”

“You don’t seem to be handling this well,” Erwin said, his voice apologetically low. He looked away while he said it, as if he were embarrassed to admit it out loud.

“Are you criticizing my emotional reaction to the apocalypse?”

“Of course not,” Erwin said. “I just want to be your friend. We hardly see you outside of meetings. You avoid everyone--even Hanji said something to me. We’re all in this together. We all feel the same grief and the same loss and I just...if I can do anything for you…”

“I’m all right, Erwin.”

“Is it...because of Eren?”

Levi bit back his first impulsive, _fuck you_. “I couldn’t save him,” was all he said. “It happened again.”

“That isn’t your fault,” Erwin said. 

“Maybe not,” Levi said. “That doesn’t make it feel any better.” They were silent for a moment, then Levi said, “You are a good leader, Erwin. I don’t agree with you on this, but I couldn’t do what you’re doing. I’m glad we have you.”

"Thank you," Erwin said. "That means...quite a lot, actually." He stood up and offered a hand to Levi. He rose from his chair and shook it.

"I won't try to stop anyone who wants to be trained," Erwin said. "But my hope is that if we throw our resources at this you won't need to risk your life killing them. We need you, Levi. None of us would even be here if it weren't for you."

He nodded without speaking, and Erwin left. _Members of the same tribe,_ he thought. What a fool he'd been. He'd spent his whole life outrunning monsters--how stupid, to think that money and power could insulate him from loss.

He picked up one of the books from his bookshelf and turned it over in his hands carefully, as if it were a live thing that would burn him. He opened the book.

_“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”_


	6. Chapter 6

Eren dragged the sled through the snow, leaving behind heavy footprints. He had tied the sled to his waist and chest with braided nylon cord. He’d learned that the monsters didn’t really move much at night, so that was when he went out to scavenge for supplies.

It had been several weeks since he’d seen another survivor. He wasn’t sure exactly what month it was--he had tried to keep track of the days at first, but too much had happened. And now there was no one to ask. He still found cell phones from time to time, but even if they had a charge they weren’t connecting to cell networks anymore. 

There were still new phones, unopened in boxes on store shelves holding charges. But without a network to connect to the calendars wouldn’t update.

The snow was deep and heavy and today was the first day in a while that he had ventured out. It had to be late January, at least, or February? If he was really lucky maybe it was even almost March.

For months he’d only worried about his day to day survival. But as the days got longer he had started to think ahead--to the future. He had started to think about having a future, and so he had started to think about time again.

Time, the concept of time, had been occupying his thoughts the last few days. He'd stumbled across a copy of _Einstein's Dreams_ in the bookstore, and he'd read it straight through in two hours. It had been beautiful, and it had shaken him awake. The stories--some hopeful, some tragic--had cast his own life into high relief. He saw that he couldn't go on as he had been. Once spring came he needed another plan.

He knew he wasn’t skillful enough to calculate a date based on the position of the stars (though there were many visible now without the city lights to interfere. More than he’d ever seen.) There were plenty of calendars in the bookstore, but if you hadn’t been marking the days right along they were useless. 

How else could you calculate the date? He had lived most of his life in the twenty-first century, and the date had never been further away than a click on a computer or cell phone. The same as time; that was why no one ever wore watches any more.

He stopped suddenly in his tracks.

He untied the sled from around his waist and began to run, high boots leaving deep grooves in the unmarked snow. He was close to his base, but he swerved to run down the back side of the building. There was a watch store; he must have walked past it a thousand times, but when you were the last man on earth who cared what time it was? He never went out during the day anyway, so the only time that mattered to him was when the sun went down and when it came up again. 

The door to the watch store was locked, but that was a skill he’d had plenty of opportunity to learn. He always kept his tools on him, and he tugged off his gloves to fumble them out. In a few minutes he had the door unlocked and he was pushing in, stamping his feet in the doorway and scattering snow over the floor.

It was dark, of course. Outside the moonlight reflected off of fields of snow, but only a dim glow from the street reached inside. He clicked on his flashlight, waving it over the cases and shelves.

It didn’t look as though the place had been looted, which wasn’t surprising. If he recalled correctly it had always been more of a work-a-day and curiosity shop than a luxury storefront, and there hadn’t been much time for looting when the monsters had suddenly appeared anyway.

They had stormed the city. Most people had been eaten or tried to flee...only a handful had survived that first week, roaming the city in nervous bands, and they’d been more concerned with scavenging food than watches or jewelry. 

Eren walked over to a case--also locked, but this one was even easier to open than the door had been. He slid it open, but he saw these were just basic timepieces (though it was 4:25 in the morning, if he was curious). They were all still running, so battery-operated.

He moved on. It took a while, but eventually he found what he was looking for. There was a case with fanciful things in it; one timepiece shaped like a rocketship, another like a dog, another like a bird’s nest. Filling up half the space were more elaborate watches. Some had a gap at the top for a sun and moon, chasing each other across space in time with the ticks. And some of them told the month and day at the bottom beneath the watch hands, still ticking faithfully away.

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the glass case with a bittersweet laugh. All his contemplation, and if he’d just been a little less dense he would have realized--this had been here all the time, only a few hundred feet away.

He chose two watches--because you never knew, right?--and then he spent a little time figuring out what sort of batteries they needed. He pocketed some of those and a small case of jewelers’ tools. All of it went into zipped pockets in his nylon coat and backpack, and then he returned back to the street where he’d left his sled.

A few minutes later he was inside the Coop, the multi-story bookstore that until recently had served the Harvard community and the millions of tourists that passed through Harvard Square every year. Eren had always made it a habit to pop in whenever he’d been on the Cambridge side of the river, more often than not just to browse. They had a nice collection of hardbound classics, but they were expensive--small press, limited runs. 

When he’d survived that first terrifying week, and it had seemed like he was going to keep on surviving he’d realized he needed a more permanent place to stay. He’d given it a lot of thought--it had to be safe, there had to be multiple exits, it had to be a place he could hide in (both from the monsters and from other potentially dangerous survivors), close to resources like food and water. He’d realized almost immediately that the Coop was ideal on all counts, and it had the added bonus of being full of another resource--books. 

He was unlikely to find an answer to where the monsters had come from, or what they were,

_For one dear son had sailed with King Odysseus, bound in the hollow ships to the stallion-land of Troy— the spearman Antiphus—but the brutal Cyclops killed him, trapped in his vaulted cave, the last man the monster ate._

but there were books there on almost every other subject imaginable...enough to stave of boredom, and loneliness. Enough to provide answers and teach him things the internet no longer could.

Once he’d made his decision he’d spent a day scoping out the building. To his relief it was empty (of people, of monsters), and in terms of getting in and out quickly he was unlikely to find a better spot. There were half a dozen good exits (including an aboveground elevated walkway to the adjacent building) and it was practically on top of the T station. It seemed a good idea to be close to the underground.

An ex-girlfriend of his had had friends at Harvard, and he knew there were underground tunnels connecting many of the buildings. He’d started mapping these out--it was frustrating that they didn’t go further, but good information to have. If he was out scavenging and got trapped, he wanted as many escape routes as possible. 

He had tried joining with other survivors in the past. He had seen what happened when you allowed yourself to be cut off from escape. 

Inside the building he kept his coat on--no electricity, no running water, no heat. That was life now. He had a small camp stove but he was nervous about the smoke indoors--he only used it to cook food and melt snow for water, relying on sleeping bags and blankets to keep warm. There was a sporting goods store nearby--that had been an invaluable resource. He’d briefly thought of setting up ‘camp’ there instead, but he’d eventually decided that it would be easier to lug camping equipment back and forth than books. And the Coop was a better building anyway.

He tugged off his gloves again to melt snow over the fire. When it was boiling he dropped in a packet of dried noodles and vegetables, and he ate his soup reading a sailing manual by flashlight. When he had finished he got into his sleeping bag, pulling it up around him. He had a book under the covers, and his flashlight. He still wore the two watches on his wrists--they made a comfortable, friendly sound in the darkness. He wasn’t used to having company. 

He breathed out...and in. Out and in. He fell asleep listening to the wind howling outside, and the quiet _tick, tick, tick_ in his ear.

 

 

 

It was still light out when he woke up. The interior of the bookstore was dim though--it was set back from the street, and in the front of the store the light hardly penetrated. Eren slept in the basement so there was no outside light at all, but both of his new watches had helpful buttons that lit their screens up so he could see the time. 2:40. Only a few hours to sunset. 

He got up and stretched, peed in a bucket that he’d empty outside later, and ate a granola bar upstairs in the travel section. There was light up here--more windows--but he was hidden behind a bookshelf, not visible from the street. He decided to read about Fiji today, and he lingered over the pictures, the bright blue water so unnatural to someone raised all his life in the North Atlantic. Beautiful though. Different. Maybe he’d go someday. Maybe the monsters wouldn’t have made it there. He put the book away (whenever he’d finished reading something, he always shelved it back where he’d found it) and got up again. He was feeling restless. He decided to go up to the roof.

He didn’t like to take risks like that--he hadn’t made it this far by being reckless. But he wanted to see the world. If a monster saw him up there that would be the end of his nice hiding place--he knew from experience how they would reach their arms into a building, smashing, searching for you.

He told himself it was worth the risk, to see the world by daylight. He didn’t quite believe it, but he went up to the roof anyway, taking a pair of binoculars with him. 

He stayed crouched low, by the ledge of the roof, hopefully hidden from passing eyes.

He looked around. Most of the city was still blanketed in snow, but there had been a few warm days and it was starting to melt in places. No snow plows anymore, but the wind swept through the streets and made its own paths--blowing snow up higher on one side than the other. Some streets that got more sun he could even see pavement shining through.

He saw giant footprints too--none particularly fresh, or particularly close, but he was wary all the same. 

He turned his binoculars on the river. Too far and the wrong angle to find what he was looking for, but he knew the boats were there. In the spring he would find one, and start practicing.

Then when he was ready he’d commandeer a vessel (he hadn’t decided what kind yet, though something with sails was essential. He didn’t want to rely solely on a motor.) and sail out of here. He didn’t know where, yet, either. But there was nothing left here. No one, except him.

And the person walking down Mass Ave. He held his breath for a moment, then put down the binoculars. He’d had hallucinations, brought on by loneliness and isolation before. He picked them up again--no, they were still there. Wearing a snowsuit and a ski mask. Ambling down near the river, as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Eren put the binoculars down again. “Fuck,” he said to himself. 

He didn’t want to go out in the daytime. Even if he couldn’t see any monsters around, that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Whoever that stranger was might not be friendly, either, but--

He hadn’t seen another human being in _weeks._ What if that was the only person still alive in the _world_ apart from him? And if they were still alive, after all this time, they could be a good ally. They would have to have learned to survive--as he had.

“Fuck,” he whispered again. Then he hauled ass downstairs, running.

He left the building before he could talk himself out of it, racing down the street in a half-melted patch of snow. He wasn’t far from the river at all. The stranger had been down and some distance to his left, but they’d be easy to spot--being the only other human around tended to make you stick out.

On the corner, before turning, he hesitated. It wasn’t too late to turn back--maybe he could find the person again after sunset. Or maybe he’d just stay indoors and not go out again. He was suddenly repulsed by his own cowardice, and he forced himself to jog across the street. He could see the person--just a small black dot, rather far away--had spotted him. They hesitated and stood still for a moment. Then began walking towards him.

Eren had to force himself not to run--he didn’t want to seem threatening. But he felt so terribly exposed, out in the open like this. He was horribly nervous--what if it was a maniac who tried to kill him? But a larger part of him was too excited by the prospect of _talking to another human being_ to care.

They were getting closer, and Eren was a mess of raw nerves when the person paused again. It was very sudden, and he had trudged a couple more feet through the snow before his brain had processed it. Then _he_ stopped too--hesitating. Maybe this had been a bad idea. What if the stranger had a weapon, a gun? Eren slowly put his hands out to the side--not a gesture of surrender, but one of (he hoped) friendliness.

The other person was reaching up towards their face--they were pulling at the ski mask. Eren sighed in relief. That was a good sign--why do that, unless you had good intentions? He waited patiently, and stood there staring for longer than the moment warranted.

They pulled the ski mask off, shaking out a mass of black hair.

It was a man.

It was Levi.

 _No,_ he said calmly, not moving. _You’re hallucinating again._

“Eren,” Levi said. His voice was choked, but Eren heard it clearly in the silent landscape, echoing over the snowbanks, as clearly as if Levi had spoken right into his ear. Then he was running.

How long did it take? He didn’t know. Sobbing and shaking he bowled Levi over, hugging him as hard as he could through layers and layers of two snowsuits. They fell and rolled together into the snowbank, leaving behind the marks of some monstrous angel.

Levi was saying something; he couldn’t hear him. He still had him in a deathgrip; if he let go, he’d wake up--alone, surrounded by bookshelves. He knew from experience.

“I’m not letting you go,” he said. “You’ll disappear.”

They were still lying awkwardly in the snowbank. Eren had snow in his ear. He didn’t care.

Levi paused. Eren couldn’t remember what he’d been saying before, but now he said gently, “Have you been alone all this time?”

Eren looked past him. “No. But being alone was better,” he muttered. “Where were you?” he said to change the subject, suddenly eager. “I went by your apartment, but I didn’t see any sign of you there.”

Levi looked horribly guilty then, which surprised him. Then he got up, and hauled Eren to his feet too. “We should get out of the open,” he said.

“My place isn’t far--I’ll take you.” Strictly speaking he didn’t need to hold Levi’s hand for that--he was a grown man, and he hadn’t held hands with another male since second grade. But Levi tolerated the contact--didn’t remark upon it--and Eren kept the point of connection, savoring it even through two pairs of gloves. 

"Where have you been living?" he asked again. "How did you survive?"

"Can we get inside? Before talking..."

"Sure," Eren said, squeezing his hand unthinkingly. He didn't want to let go. If he was dreaming, he wanted it go on and on...

"This is where you've been living?" Levi said, gazing upwards as Eren led him through the front doors of the Coop.

"Yes. It's a good spot--lots of exits, solid building, near the underground."

"Yes. I see that."

"I have, um." He'd set up kitchen supplies behind the cash registers. Reluctantly he let go of Levi to go and fumble with the little stove. "Do you want something to eat? Or tea?"

"Anything is fine," Levi said. He sat on the edge of the counter--his feet didn't reach the floor, but then neither did Eren's when he did that. Eren poured snow into the little pot, and set it melting.

"Eren, come here...sit down."

Eren did, setting his gloves down and sitting opposite Levi on the wooden counter. Levi rubbed his face, as if he didn't know how to begin, and Eren barked out a sudden laugh. 

"Levi, whatever it is...it can't be worse than the end of the world," he said.

The faintest smile crossed the older man's face. "I'm not the only one still alive," he said, and Eren felt his heart skip a beat and he forced himself not to hope. "Mikasa and Armin and Erwin and Historia were all with me that morning. We all made it out. There were others that came, later. I looked for you, but your apartment building had been destroyed. I hacked the GPS on your phone, and I saw it was just gone, and I thought you were gone too. Eren, I'm so sorry..."

He'd barely heard a word after Mikasa and Armin. He couldn't speak at first. "You're telling me the truth?" he rasped out, when he was finally able to. "Mikasa and Armin? They're okay?"

"They were fine when I left them last night."

"You promise? You swear?"

"I can call them right now if you want."

"The cell networks are gone," Eren said, suddenly wary. He _was_ dreaming!

"Yes. But we have our own private telecom satellite."

"Oh," Eren said. "Of course you do." Then he burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 feedback <3


	7. Chapter 7

“How did you get here, anyway? With the snow and everything. And what are you doing here? And you’re alone?”

Levi had told him, haltingly, about the place they had deep in the Berkshires, and how they’d escaped on a helicopter the day the Titans had first appeared.

Titans. Eren supposed it was as good a name for them as any. He was still sitting on the check-out counter, but he’d pulled his legs up and crossed them, hugging his knees.

“Did you ever hear about how I made my money?”

“Uh...Armin told me once, I think he said you wrote software for self-driving cars…”

“Yeah, years ago, before Google and Tesla. I was one of the first people to work on the problem. I’ve been…” here he exhaled, and Eren saw some passing frustration flash across his face. “I knew we were going to have a major problem supplying the camp, with food, with equipment, and it was twofold. First, there are all the abandoned cars on the road; and then it's winter--the roads are covered in snow.”

“Did you--” and here Eren grinned helplessly, “Did you make self-driving snowplows?”

“And towtrucks,” Levi said, eyeing him. “I’m still trying to work out the kinks though. What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know. Everything. I’m imagining if I had bumped into a self-driving snowplow. I really thought I might have been the last person left alive.” He laughed again. 

Levi watched him for a moment. Then he said, “Well. Anyway. I wanted to check on their progress. And scout for supplies, we’re running low on everything we need to make the drones--”

“Drones?”

“That’s what I’d been working on, even before all this started. There are about a hundred of them on the perimeter of the camp, and they alert us when a Titan gets too close. I can use them for surveying, too, but range is a limitation right now. And Erwin and Armin think we can use them to fight the Titans, but I don’t think that’s feasible.”

“The military fought them,” Eren said, quietly. “That first week. I saw...well. I never saw them kill one. They just regenerated…” he shuddered.

“There’s a very specific way they have to be killed. Deep cuts to the flesh on the back of the neck, removing a certain amount will do it.”

Eren blinked at him. “You can kill them? You’ve done it?”

“A few, at this point. Yeah.”

Eren opened his mouth to speak, but then a loud beeping noise erupted from Levi’s pocket. He pulled out a phone and looked at it, frowning.

“Titans?” Eren ask, feeling his heart speed up.

“No. There’s a storm moving in. We should head back now.”

“It’s still light out,” Eren protested. “They don’t move at night. We should wait…”

Levi looked at him, one of those looks Eren had all but forgotten about. The kind that seemed to be able to see right inside of his head.

“It’ll be all right, Eren,” Levi said gently. “I know you’re afraid, but we’ll be all right. We can outrun them if it comes to it--but I can’t stay here. They need me at the camp; I can’t risk getting caught in a storm. If you want to stay though, I’ll leave you a phone. You’ll be able to talk to us through it, and I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.”

Eren shook his head. He was afraid, but he wasn’t _stupid._ “I’m coming with you. Can I bring a backpack?”

 

 

 

 

He’d stashed bug-out bags everywhere, and it didn’t take him long to grab one and throw a few books and clothes in. Zipping it up he climbed the stairs, nodding wanly to Levi. “I’m ready.”

“That was fast.” 

Eren gave him a sad smile. “Being fast saves your life.”

“No argument.”

They left the Coop, and Eren let himself have a last look as they went. _I’ll be back_ he thought. Not a promise, or a premonition exactly, but a decision. If Levi was alive...if Mikasa and Armin were...if there were other survivors, then maybe it wasn’t the end of the world. If Levi had figured a way to kill these things, then maybe they could _take it back_.

He followed Levi back up the road by the river, sticking close, though Levi seemed extraordinarily untroubled. He tried to follow his example.

Eventually they stopped at a new, modern building. There was a motorcycle parked outside, and Eren laughed again at the absurdity of it. Motorcycles and self-driving snowplows…

“Why did you stop here?”

“This is the building Erwin bought--well, leased--before everything went to shit. It seemed as good a place as any, and I knew there was lab equipment inside. Hanji asked me to pick some things up for her.”

“Hanji?”

“My friend...didn’t I ever mention her?”

“No...at least not that I remember. You were always complaining about Erwin.” Eren gave him a smile that was almost shy, and Levi returned it.

“Well, in that respect nothing’s changed.”

Levi motioned for Eren to get on behind him, and carefully he did. He took the helmet Levi passed him.

“Were you expecting company?”

“You never know. I’ve found survivors in stranger places.”

They were moving then, and Eren leaned forward to hang on to Levi. He wrapped his arms around Levi’s middle. Possibly that was overkill, but he could just plead ignorance on motorcycle etiquette later if necessary, and somehow he didn’t think Levi would say anything. He was pretty sure anything he might do was going to get a pass for the moment and contemplating what he _might_ do made him smile.

It was too loud to talk, and Eren didn’t want to distract Levi anyway. Amazingly, the streets _had_ been plowed to some extent, though only the road they followed, and only a narrow strip of it was clear. Eren soon lost track of the number of abandoned cars he saw half-buried in the snow. It was still tricky for Levi to navigate--icy and slushy most of the time, and there were many areas he had to slow to a crawl to maneuver the bike past obstacles. 

So far they hadn’t seen any Titans, and that made him nervous. He was too pessimistic to believe they’d make it to sunset without _something_ happening. At some point--as if sensing his thoughts--Levi squeezed his hand reassuringly, and Eren had to swallow hard. Had Levi been so in synch with him before? It was overwhelming. He was glad that for the moment at least they couldn’t talk, and Levi couldn’t see his face.

As they got further out of the city the road grew clearer and Levi was able to speed up. It was obvious he’d been able to devote more resources to clearing this stretch of highway, or at least that it had been more successful. 

It was getting later, and they were on a long empty stretch of the Mass Pike, nothing on either side of them except snow-topped trees. Eren was zoning out on the horizon, letting fragments of the _Iliad_ run through his head, like fingers absentmindedly plucking notes on a keyboard.

Eren heard them first; it was the noise that followed him into his dreams at night.

“Levi!” he cried, suddenly tightening his grasp around the older man.

“I hear them,” Levi called back over the noise of the engine. He turned his head, looking back past Eren. “There’s three of them. All right. You ever ridden a motorcycle by yourself before?”

“I--a couple times--”

“You know how to make it speed up and slow down?”

“Yes!”

“Good. The autopilot’s on--it’ll take you home if anything happens to me.”

 _”What?”_ Eren screamed, and then Levi was gone--Eren’s arms were left holding Levi’s empty snowsuit and helmet, as if he’d just done a magic trick. Later Eren would think what a good thing it was the autopilot _had_ been on.

He stared back behind him, not watching the road at all. Somehow Levi was flying through the air, toward the mouth of of one of the monsters. It was naked, at least forty feet high, its face contorted in silent laughter. Eren moaned, unable to look away. 

Then something happened. The Titan was stumbling. It fell to the ground, face-first and still, and masses of steam began pouring off of it. Eren stared.

He looked up--watching closely now. He realized Levi was wearing some kind of gear--it looked like a rock-climbing harness--and he was holding two--were they _swords?_ He watched in amazement as Levi turned his body in mid-air, spinning almost too fast to see, and he dispatched the second Titan, and then the third. 

He landed gracefully on the ground and Eren realized he was going to have to go back and pick Levi up--but before he could try to figure out how to do that the motorcycle was turning--going back for its master, apparently, and Eren had to stifle his hysterical laughter.

Too much had happened already. He was going to lose it before they even made it back to Levi’s base.

The motorcycle slowed to a stop, and Eren stood up. When Levi was close enough he grabbed him and held him tight.

“Why didn’t you tell me you could do that!” he yelled.

“I’m sorry--I was going to and then I got the weather warning--” he was hugging Eren back.

“Are you all right?” Levi asked, after a moment. “I have some xanax in my bag.”

Another half-hysterical giggle burst out of him. “Yeah--yeah, that’s...probably a good idea.” 

Levi pulled a first aid kit of one of the bags strapped to the bike, and he gave Eren one of the tablets and a bottle of water. 

"Ready?"

"You're teaching me how to do that," Eren said with quiet confidence, and Levi smiled faintly. He rolled up the snowsuit and packed it away into another compartment.

"Expecting more trouble?"

"Better just to be prepared," Levi said, and he got back on, waiting patiently for Eren to arrange himself behind him.

An hour later, as Levi throttled the bike up to eighty miles an hour, and then ninety, and then a hundred, behind them Eren heard the sound of giant crashing footsteps growing fainter (it was only minutes, now, to darkness and safety). He laughed out loud and threw his arms tightly around Levi's shoulders. 

"I love you!" he yelled, knowing Levi wouldn't hear him over the sound of the engine.

"What?" Levi cried back, but Eren only grinned.

 

 

 

 

One of the drones alerted Hanji that Levi had passed the perimeter. "Huh. That was a quick trip," she murmured, tapping a button on the tablet by her side. He hadn't even been gone twenty-four hours. She saw he had left her a message at some point-- _On my way back. Bringing company. Get the OT together._

She bit her lip, thoughtfully, hoping there wouldn't be trouble. So far the survivors they'd met had been grateful and cooperative--most of the personal problems she was aware of were confined to leadership. She sent the message to Mikasa, Armin, Historia, and Erwin though, and went down to wait in the atrium for Levi's arrival.

Mikasa was the last one to arrive, and consequently she was the first one to see them coming in, descending the long staircase into the glass-walled atrium as Levi walked in followed by the stranger.

Mikasa screamed and Hanji turned to look at her in surprise; she was running down the steps towards them, and then Armin made his own dash towards the newcomer.

"Mikasa," the young man said, grinning, as he embraced her. She'd been further away, but she was faster than Armin; then all three of them were holding each other and laughing and talking and crying--well, Mikasa was doing most of the crying. It was more emotion than Hanji had ever seen from her.

"So," she said conversationally, turning towards Erwin, "I'm guessing that's Eren?"

"That would be Eren," Erwin agreed. He sounded thunderstruck. 

Levi was standing slightly apart from the trio, watching them with a smile on his face. Hanji had known him for nearly ten years, and she thought she knew him as well as anyone could. But she had never seen him look like that. Simple, uncomplicated happiness was not something she had known he was capable of. 

"I have to go check on something," she said to Erwin. "I'll see you guys at dinner, yeah?" Then she ran up the stairs before anyone noticed.

 

 

 

 

Eren was grateful Levi had given him the xanax earlier; it let him experience the emotions bombarding him through a soft and cloudy buffer. He was beginning to think someone should offer one to Mikasa though; she hadn't stopped crying or clinging to him for the last hour.

He and Mikasa and Armin and Historia were all sitting on the floor, talking--past each other and over each other, in some cases, but they were telling him everything that had happened here, and he was doing his best to explain his own unlikely survival. Suddenly there was a chime over an intercom and Historia sprang to her feet. 

"That means dinner's in fifteen minutes," she said, for Eren's benefit. "I really need to pee, too. Come on, Mikasa."

"But--" 

"You need to at least wash your face," Historia said severely. "He's not going anywhere!" and they laughed, though Mikasa laughed reluctantly. 

"I'm really not, I promise," he told her.

"Okay," she said, and she kissed him on the cheek before she let Historia drag her off.

"Eren," someone called, and he turned. "Go on, Armin, he'll catch up," the woman said. She was tall, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, wearing a labcoat with her hands slung slow in the pockets.

Armin hesitated, but she smiled sweetly at him and then he mumbled something and walked away. She chuckled.

"Are you--"

"Hanji," she said brightly, sticking out her hand.

"Oh--I'm Eren...but I guess you figured that out--"

"I wanted to see if you wanted to clean up before dinner," she said kindly. "I'll show you your room, if you like."

"Oh! Yeah, that'd be great."

Shouldering his backpack he wondered where they would put him--the others had made references to lots of people living here, and Levi had said there were something like two dozen people, weren't there? He hadn't been able to see much of the place as they'd driven up--it had been too dark--he wasn't even sure how big it was, although from what they'd said he knew large chunks of it were underground.

He followed Hanji up two flights of stairs and down a corridor. 

"Levi's the only other one up here," she told him. "It's an odd layout--when we bought the place, we had no idea any of _this_ was going to happen, so we've been sticking people wherever there's room. We're trying to build more, but winter's slowed down construction. Your friends are mostly down in the basement, though Mikasa was able to claim an attic room for herself in the other building--I hope it's okay?"

They had arrived--and it wasn't a room at all, but a suite with an office and a private bathroom. Everything was made up already--sheets and a comforter on the bed, soap in the bathroom, and Eren caught a glimpse of white snowy fields through the large picture windows.

"I--it's great," he said, looking lost. "Thank you. It's wonderful."

"Great!" she said, pretending not to notice his disquiet. "Well, I'll let Levi know you're settling in--he'll bring you down when you're ready, show you where the dining room is."

A look of relief and gratitude passed over Eren's face--"Thank you," he said.

Hanji closed the door behind her, and then crossed the hallway. She knocked and then opened the door without waiting for an answer.

"I gave Eren my room," she announced sticking her head in. "You can thank me later."

Levi--already back at work fixing a drone--looked up from the tools and screws covering his desk to glare at her. "What even."

"He's obviously been through an enormous trauma," she said, shoving her hands into her pockets. "Surviving on his own for the last--what, four? five months?--I figured he'd be more comfortable with you nearby." She smiled then, a completely innocent and yet somehow totally untrustworthy smile, and Levi scowled back at her.

"And I wanted to get him settled before Mikasa offered to share her room with him," she added, doing her best to look saintly.

Apparently Levi bought it. "Where are you going to sleep?" he asked, grudgingly putting aside the drone he'd been working on.

"I moved my things down to the lab. There's a room down there that's perfect--I already had a cot in there, for when I'm watching the experiments overnight. Anyway, I'll leave you to get ready--I told Eren you'd take him down to dinner and show him the dining room."

"Oh," Levi said, after a moment. He rarely ate with them; usually he'd just scavenge something after everyone else was in bed. 

Hanji gave him another brilliant smile before departing, whistling to herself as she strode away, and wondering how long it would be until she got her room back.


	8. Chapter 8

Dinner was noisy and crowded. There were two dozen adults and nearly a dozen children to feed, and Eren felt his heart almost stop seeing so many people in one place. They were spread over two rooms off of the large, practically industrial kitchen, at tables and chairs that Eren guessed were folded up when not in use. 

Hanji had steered them over to a table when they’d arrived, and she had handed him a tablet computer and a cell phone at the same time. 

She was rapidly explaining to him how things in the camp worked, faster than he could keep up with.

“We take turns cooking dinner,” she said. “Breakfast and lunch are less formal, we try to make sure there’s enough food around that people can just come and eat when they’re hungry and their schedules allow, and of course Sasha brings the children down so that they all eat at the same time.”

Eren had noticed one of those children creeping over to their table. As he watched she practically slithered into Levi’s lap--neither Levi nor Hanji commented on this so Eren guessed it was a normal occurrence.

The girl--she was only eight or nine, he thought, very small and thin with a haze of untidy brown hair hovering around her face--wrapped an arm around Levi’s neck and stared at Eren. She looked unimpressed.

“We work in teams, with one person taking the lead, usually, but everyone does things a bit differently. Once a week we have a meeting to discuss the meal plan, and what ingredients we have on hand and what we need. John has a farm down the road, and everyone helps out there as they can. There’s a greenhouse so we’re still growing food in the winter, and we’re going to need to expand that this spring. But it isn’t enough--we need to go out regularly to get more supplies. That’s Levi’s area, usually.”

“I’m Eren,” he said to the girl, while Hanji went to grab their food. “What’s your name?”

She squinted at him. “Sylvie Chloe Esposito,” she said.

“He’s Mikasa’s brother,” Levi told her. 

“Oh,” Sylvie said. She turned her head and looked at Mikasa, sitting at a table nearby. “Why didn’t he come here with her, then?”

“I...was separated from everyone the day they first came here,” Eren said.

“Oh,” she said, digesting this. She studied him. “You were on your own ever since?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded. “Me too, I was on my own too.”

“Oh,” he said. “For how long?”

She looked up at Levi. “How long, Levi?”

“For about three months, we think,” Levi said.

She nodded in agreement.

 _Three months?_ Eren thought, aghast. It had been bad enough for him, and he was a grown man. He couldn’t imagine this tiny girl on her own...out there, with _them_.

“You must be very tough,” he said.

The compliment seemed to please her. “Yes,” she agreed. “I am.”

“Sylvie,” a woman called behind them. 

She slid out of Levi’s lap. “Did you bring me something?”

“Maybe. Were you good?”

“No, not really,” she said unrepentantly. She turned back to Eren. “I guess you must be tough too,” she said grudgingly, giving him another once-over. Then she went back to the table where the other kids were.

“Three months?” Eren whispered to Levi.

“Yeah,” he said. “She was good at hiding, and good at finding food.”

“And you found her?”

“She found us,” Levi said with a crooked smile. “We were field testing our equipment--killing Titans in the city. The maneuver gear works best when you have tall trees or buildings nearby. She saw us killing them, and she came out to us.”

“Damn,” Eren said, looking over at her.

“Yes. She held the record for surviving on her own, until you.”

“No family?”

“No,” Levi said. He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t think she had much of a family to start with. I think that might have actually been what helped her survive as well as she did. She was used to fending for herself.”

Eren realized, then, why Levi might have felt a kinship with this girl.

Hanji returned holding a lasagna pan, which Levi eyed dubiously. “Who cooked this?” he said.

“John did! It’s _primavera_ lasagna Levi, totally safe.” 

Levi looked across the room and John--a tall black man--flashed him a thumbs-up sign. Levi snorted and John rolled to his feet and sauntered over. 

“Hi,” he said to Eren, holding out a hand. “I’m John.”

“Eren,” he said, trying not to wince at the strength of his handshake. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” They were occupying all three chairs at the table, so John crouched down beside them. “So, you’re Mikasa’s brother, huh?”

“Adopted, but yeah.”

“You have any trouble on the way back?” he asked Levi. 

“I killed three on the Pike.”

“On your own? Not bad.”

“We outran a few more before nightfall.”

John nodded to Eren. “What’d you think of that? Pretty good, right?”

Eren smiled. “Yeah,” he agreed, wondering what was up.

“You wanna learn?”

“Yeah,” Eren said immediately. “We were talking about that earlier.”

John seemed satisfied. “Good,” he said. “Good. That’s great news. I’ll let you guys eat. Come talk to me tomorrow, Eren, I’ll be down at the farm all day.”

Eren looked back at Levi once he had left.

“He lost his wife in the first days after the Titans appeared,” Levi said quietly. “He was our neighbor here--they had a farm. He was the first one to learn how to use the maneuver gear after Hanji and me, and he’s been helping us train anyone who wants to learn.”

Eren looked out at the room--filled with happy people, talking and laughing and eating. You’d never know from looking at them that the apocalypse had happened.

“How many people want to learn?”

“Not enough so far. Erwin has...not been totally supportive of our plans.”

“He thinks drones are what we should be focusing on,” Hanji said, forking some lasagna. “And he’s more or less our unofficial leader, so his opinion carries a lot of weight.”

“But...aren’t you two in charge? This is your place, isn’t it?”

Hanji and Levi exchanged a look. 

“It isn’t as simple as that,” Hanji said carefully. “Erwin is...umm...better suited for leadership than we are.”

“We’re antisocial,” Levi said.

“Levi is antisocial,” Hanji said. “I’m very busy. I’m also the only doctor here. Erwin has been managing people and complex organizations for his whole career--it’s what he excels at. He’s very good at it, and we appreciate his work…”

“But you don’t agree with him about the drones.” Eren said.

“This has been a point of contention, yes,” Hanji agreed diplomatically. “Anyway. Let me finish telling you about this place--here, open that tablet--”

The tablet had information on it about everything--lists of names, jobs, chore rosters, duties, skills, availability. Lists of building repairs and suggested improvements, lists of things Sasha needed for the classroom, lists of requests people had for the next scavenging trip--electronic equipment, books, board games, medicines, clothes, musical instruments. 

There was a calendar showing events. Movie nights, dances, _craft nights_.

“We need to keep busy,” Hanji said a little defensively when he gaped at this. “We’re trying to make things as normal as we can--social interaction keeps people happy, and--”

“No, no, it’s great. I just--it’s amazing, is what it is,” he said firmly. “I just...yesterday I thought I might be the only person left alive, and now…” he spread his hands, indicating the room full of people.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. I see--how that could be a bit overwhelming. Well, why don’t you take a few days to get settled? You can start training with John if you like, and try out different things. See where you might like to start working. There’s also a map of the camp in here, so you can find your way around, and this is how you control things like the lights and the AV equipment and the heat in your room.”

“Thank you,” he told her sincerely.

She beamed at him, then glanced at her watch. “I have to go check on something,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

Eren looked back at Levi. 

“Ready to go?” Levi asked drily.

“As horrible as it probably sounds, yes,” Eren replied.

“You’d better say good night to your friends first,” Levi said.

It took a while. Mikasa wanted didn’t want to let him out of her sight, and it took persuasion and insistence that yes, he really was that tired before he could escape. Even so Mikasa was clearly disappointed. That familiar guilty feeling was back--but for the first time he was grateful to have it. He had believed Mikasa, and all his other friends were dead. 

Levi was still waiting at the other table. The rooms had started to clear--the children had left a while ago, and only a few adults were still left sitting around and talking. 

“You okay?” Levi asked him when they were alone in the hallway, making their way back.

“Yeah. It’s just a lot. Good. But a lot.”

“I wanted to tell you…” Levi said when they were upstairs again, on the landing between the bedrooms. “I meant to earlier. I looked for you the day of the attack--”

“You did?” Eren said, blinking at him in surprise.

“That morning, I--” Levi sighed, rubbing the side of his face. “You wanna come in?” he asked. “This will probably take a minute.”

“Sure,” Eren said, perplexed. 

They went into Levi’s room, and Eren saw that it was a suite like his own. The large outer room Levi had set up as a workshop, and behind another door Eren assumed was a bedroom. It was all very tidy--tools and parts were neatly lined up, and even the desk where Levi worked was spotlessly clean. Levi started making tea behind him, and Eren sat down in one of the office chairs. 

Levi brought him a cup and leaned on the desk across from him, looking moody.

Eren watched him curiously.

“I’ve seen them before,” he said at last.

“Huh?”

“The Titans.”

_”What?”_

“When I dropped out of college...it was really because I was recruited for a government project. Very off the books, though I didn’t know that at the time. My...uncle--did I ever mention him?”

“Yeah...once.”

“Well, he had a black ops background. The man in charge of this project--another Smith--worked with him at one time.” Levi grimaced. “Though I didn’t find that out until later, either. But I guess knowing my uncle was enough for him to seek me out. We didn’t know what this project was--none of us did. We had some military and special ops training, but we went in blind. We faced off against Titans. It was--” he shook his head. “Well, you know. It was a nightmare. As far as I know I was the only survivor.”

“You--” Eren was still trying to catch up. “You mean, you saw them before. The Titans. Before all this happened.”

Levi nodded. “Years before,” he said.

“But--” Eren was staring at him, wide-eyed and astonished, “What _are_ they? Where do they come from?”

“I don’t know. That was my only encounter with them...until they appeared again, everywhere and all at once.”

Eren breathed out roughly. “How did you survive? What’d you do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember much...probably because I spent the next few years trying to forget it.”

“Jesus,” Eren muttered, looking away. “So you...you knew, all this time? That they existed?”

“I guess...I tried to pretend to myself that it hadn’t really happened,” Levi said bleakly. “That I was...remembering some horrific event from my past in a fantastic way...that the drugs had addled my brain, and the memories weren’t reliable. You ever read any HP Lovecraft?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Well, it’s like that,” Levi said.

“Damn,” Eren said. He realized his tea was getting cold and he took a sip. “What do you think they are?”

Levi sighed. “I don’t know. None of us do. Historia thinks they’re from another dimension, I suppose that makes as much sense as anything does.

“So. The morning of the attack...what we’ve been calling Day Zero...I was out for a run, and I just...felt it. That _fear._ I hadn’t felt it in years, but it all came back. I wasn’t so far from your place, but by the time I got there…” he shook his head. “It was just rubble. And I thought you must have been inside. I thought you were dead. I checked your phone anyway, but it wasn’t showing up at all.”

Eren smiled mirthlessly. “I guess it was destroyed,” he said. “I was out that morning too...I left my phone in my room. When the attacks started I went down into the subway--with about a million other people. For a while they were trying to get people out of the city, but eventually the trains stopped running. We didn’t know what had happened...it was just chaos. No one was in charge…” his voice drifted off, and they were both left in uncomfortable silence.

“Well. I should have tried harder to find you. I’m sorry.”

“Levi...you don’t need to apologize for that. You got everyone else out alive! I don’t blame you at all.”

Levi nodded, looking down, and Eren felt his heart almost burst. He wished he could say what he meant; he wished he could say what he felt. 

_You made it this far,_ a voice within him said. _Don’t be such a fucking coward._ He crossed the room and took Levi’s hands in his. And Levi looked up at him, faint surprise lighting up grey eyes.

“You saved them,” Eren said. “You saved me.”


	9. Chapter 9

He woke up flailing wildly.

_He was dead, he’d been eaten, he was in the belly of one of those monsters, screaming victims all around him, dead and dying, partially digested…_

He moaned in horror, trying to free himself, and when he landed on the floor tangled up in his blankets he still didn’t know where he was or what had happened. 

There was a blinking light next to him and he grasped it in his hand. It came to life obediently, a tablet lighting up. He stared at it stupidly; some instinct made him speak.

“Lights,” he said out loud.

The lights came up at once, showing his room. Not the inside of a Titan. He sobbed once, silently, then pulled the blankets off of his legs and threw them on the bed. He put the tablet back on his nightstand and pulled a t-shirt over his head, then he walked to the door. He knew his way around by now.

The lights were on in the landing, and in the kitchenette-lounge off of his and Levi’s rooms. He’d been about to go downstairs but he stopped, hearing someone moving around. 

The tablet had said it was 1:30.

Levi was there, still dressed, manning the Keurig. 

“You couldn’t sleep either?” Eren asked, sliding into a chair.

“I don’t sleep,” Levi replied.

Eren laughed, then stopped when Levi didn’t. Levi had finished and was putting cups on a tray.

Eren raised his eyes in surprise. “You drink cocoa?” There were marshmallows in it.

Levi looked at him a moment. “No.” Then he took the tray and walked back toward his room.

Eren craned his neck, and saw that Levi had left the door open. That was good enough for him, and he padded along after.

The light was a little softer in here, and a few computer monitors glowed gently on the far side of the room. Levi was back at his desk already tapping away on his laptop. Sylvie was in the cushiest chair, holding the cup of cocoa. There was a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies open beside her.

She narrowed her eyes at Eren. 

“What’s he doing here?”

“He’s allowed,” Levi said. She scowled and ate another cookie, watching him defiantly.

Eren came and sat near Levi, more at ease than he would have been a few days earlier. He was surprised to see Sylvie up so late, but he wasn’t surprised that she was there. She slipped away from the other kids whenever she could, and Sasha had mentioned her exasperation with her to him unprompted.

He’d met Sasha on his second day at the camp, up on the roof, and she'd given him insight into more than just Sylvie. He had been looking for a quiet spot to be alone (not his room...somewhere Mikasa and the others wouldn’t immediately come looking for him) and he’d stumbled upon her up there.

“Smoke?” she asked him. She had a lit cigarette between two fingers, and held out a pack with her other hand. 

“No thanks,” he said, eyeing her cautiously. She was a pretty brunette, and he'd noticed a small unusual ring on her ring finger. He wondered if she could be engaged to someone here, or if it was someone she had lost.

The other notable thing about her was that she was carrying an AK-47 on her back.

“Um.”

“I murdered the children, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she deadpanned. “They’re in the compost heap behind the greenhouse.”

He laughed nervously, and she smirked.

“They’re helping John do some planting, actually. He told me to take the afternoon off.”

“Why the…?” he motioned to the gun.

She shrugged one shoulder. “You’re right. It wouldn’t do much against the Titans. It makes me feel better, though.”

“Weren’t you a kindergarten teacher?” he asked weakly.

“Yep. I did mandatory military service before that, though.” She blew out a last whiff of smoke and stubbed out the cigarette, putting it carefully away in a pocket. “I was in the Israeli army,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, digesting this.

“My father was American,” she said, answering the question he’d been trying to figure out how to ask next. “I came over here for my Master’s, then I stayed.” She stared out into the snowy woods beyond the camp, looking pensive. Then she seemed to come to a decision; she turned back to him and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Are you with him?” she demanded.

“Huh?”

“Levi.”

Eren blushed, unable to mistake her meaning. “No--I’m not--I’m--I date girls.”

“There’s something between you,” she said bluntly. “He’s like a different person since he brought you back.”

“He seems the same to me,” Eren mumbled. “We were just--we were friends before.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything--I’m bi myself, so--”

“It’s fine!” he said, running his hands through his hair and deeply regretting his decision to come up here.

“You’re probably wondering why I’d care, so I’ll tell you,” she said, ignoring his discomfort. “You being here changes everything.”

He frowned, suddenly guessing what she was talking about, and she nodded as if he’d just agreed with her.

“We’ve been running things by committee,” she said. “The senior people are the ones who arrived here first. Levi and Hanji, Erwin and Armin and Historia, Mikasa, Connie, Jean, John and me.

"They’ll want you included--I have no objection, you’ve survived longer than anyone else. But it changes things. You already started training with John this morning.”

“Yes.” He had been eager to learn. They hadn't made it very far--the maneuver gear was tricky to use, but he was stubborn and persistent, and he'd only stopped when John had insisted they break for lunch. He’d thought of Levi the whole time. Remembered him flying through the air on the Pike, slashing the Titans, triumphing over them. He wanted that. For months he’d done nothing but run and hide; now he wanted to fight back.

“And you’ll side with Levi?” she asked.

“I--I don’t know,” he said, surprised. “Probably. I mean--”

“I’m talking about how we fight them--allocating resources to the drones, or to the maneuver gear.”

“Yes,” he said instantly.

She nodded. “That’s my position. Along with John and Levi and Hanji. If you join us it’s five against six. But if you’re on our side I think there’s a good chance Mikasa will switch over--and Armin’s pretty firmly in Erwin’s camp, but who knows? Maybe he will too.”

Eren blinked at her a few times. “That's not what you want?” he asked, sensing there was something else in what she was saying.

She shrugged. “It changes things,” she said. “This is a small community. For all we know, we’re all that’s left of humanity. Change can be dangerous.”

“I’m not going to stir up trouble--”

“Just your being here changes things,” she said gently. “It’s not your fault. But your survival is evidence that it’s possible to survive out there. That this isn’t the only place we can survive.”

“You mean--” he said slowly. “You think people will want to leave?”

“It’s possible,” she said. “Lots of things are. They think the Titans are attracted to large groups of people, and this group might be the largest one left. I heard Hanji and Levi talking about it once, and I know Levi thinks it’s unsafe to have so many people in one place.”

Eren shivered involuntarily; he’d just found this sanctuary, and he didn’t want to hear that it was unsafe. Not so soon.

“He’s already had disagreements with Erwin...from what I know, they worked together before,” she continued.

“Yes...that’s true,” Eren said uncomfortably, remembering Levi's frequent exasperation with Erwin back in the fall.

“Well, if you want to know my opinion I think he’s tired of doing everything Erwin’s way,” she said blandly. “Hanji and Levi bought this place and started fixing it up themselves.”

“But they value Erwin--they told me that.”

“Yes,” she said. “But if they decide they’re sick of listening to him, and they leave, what happens to the rest of us? Who goes with them?”

Eren felt queasy. “They wouldn’t do that,” he said, well aware that he had no idea what they would do, that this woman who’d been living and listening to his friends for months probably had a much better grasp of the politics than he did.

“Were you in intelligence?” he asked suddenly.

She smirked at him, and he looked at her warily. Then something out in the snowfield caught his eye and he leaned over for a better look. “I think one of your students is coming back,” he said.

“Ugh!” Sasha said, not looking. “Sylvie. That little monster. I’m not looking. I’m taking my _break,_ damn it!”

“Will she be all right on her own, then? Should I go and get her?”

Sasha snorted. “La Cucaracha will outlive us all,” she said. “What?” when Eren looked at her aghast. “It’s what she calls herself. You haven’t heard her say that?”

“That’s kind of a dark joke,” he said.

“Yes. Dark and grim, that’s Sylvie. She’ll just go and bother Levi anyway.”

Despite the harshness of the words, Sasha only sounded resigned, not cold and unfeeling. Eren had noticed even in his short time here that she was quick to hug and joke with the other children. He didn’t want to judge her for being unkind to Sylvie--guessing from what he’d observed so far that she _had_ tried to be kind to Sylvie and that Sylvie had probably told her to fuck right off.

He quirked a smile. “She likes him.”

“He rescued her, as far as she’s concerned.”

“He rescued me too.”

“Well, you have that in common. Just watch out for her, that’s all,” Sasha said, only half-joking.

Eren watched Sylvie now, guarding the cookie box.

Hanji breezed in a moment later, carrying her own laptop. “Hello, hello,” she said, running an affectionate hand over Sylvie’s head. “Are there any Genevas left or did you eat them all?” Hanji picked through the box.

“Which ones are the Genevas?”

“The ones with the little pecans.”

“Yuck. No. I don’t like those.”

Hanji held one in her teeth and nodded to Eren, setting her laptop up beside him. Eren decided to test his luck; he went over to the box. Sylvie narrowed her eyes but didn’t say anything. 

It was mostly picked over; Sylvie had been hungry, apparently. But all the Chessmen were left; he guessed she didn’t like those either.

He went to pick one up, and darted his hand back when she dug her little nails into it.

“Ow!” he yelped.

“Not those,” she growled at him. “Levi likes those.”

“He’s allowed,” Levi said from the other side of the room, not turning around or bothering to raise his voice. 

She glared at him and mouthed, _One._

He inclined his head to Levi, and she scowled again but gave her permission. He took two cookies back, setting one down beside Levi on a napkin.

“Hanji, how many Pepperidge Farm cookies are left?”

“You have the box, dear.”

“I mean in the _world.”_

“Ah, I see. Well, I don’t know. Quite a few, I’d imagine, although they’re probably going to be pretty stale soon.”

Sylvie brooded over this. “Well, Levi can just build robots to get the factory running again, right? Then we can have all we want.”

“Sylvie, if you want cookies then _you_ can build the robots for the factory,” Levi said.

“All right,” Sylvie said. “You have to show me how, though.”

Levi grunted, and Eren smiled. Sylvie picked up a paperback he recognized. It was _The Phantom Tollbooth;_ there’d been a stack of them prominently displayed by the cashwrap at the Coop.

“Is that book from--”

“Yes,” Levi said. “I stole it. Do you mind?”

Eren laughed. “No, I don’t mind,” he said. “Do you like to read, Sylvie?”

 _“Obviously,”_ she said.

“What’s your favorite book?”

“The one where you don’t talk to me.”

“Sylvie,” Levi said. “Maybe it’s time for you to go to bed.”

She glared at Levi’s indifferent back for a moment, then said, “I like _The Magician’s Nephew.”_

“Oh,” he said in surprise. He was tempted to say something like _“Not Harry Potter?”_ but he suspected that might get him a book to the face. “I always liked that one too.”

She watched him suspiciously. “You did? Most people like _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”_

But Eren shook his head. “I never liked Susan and Edmund and the rest of them. I thought they were insufferable.”

“They _are!”_ Sylvie said, rolling her eyes in passionate agreement. “I liked some of the other ones though. Like _The Horse and His Boy_. That was good. But not _The Last Battle.”_

“Why do you like _The Magician’s Nephew_ the best?” 

“Well, I like how it tells how everything got there. And the part at the beginning, with all the puddles, and each one is a different world. _That_ was wonderful. I like to think about all the different worlds, and how there are so many stories in them--and how you could get to the different ones.” She sighed happily. “I’d love to go there.”

“I remember that part too,” Eren said, in surprise. And he did--though it had been at least twenty years since he’d read that book. And what he remembered the most was how the boy had been able to save his mother at the end…

“Did you read _The Golden Compass_ yet?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “What’s that?”

Hanji clucked in agreement, “Yes, I think you’ll like that one Sylvie. One of us will pick it up for you the next time we’re out.”

Sylvie looked satisfied, and she stuck her nose back in her book. Eren pulled his feet up, crossing his legs underneath him. None of them was speaking; Sylvie kept reading, Levi was coding, and Hanji was frowning over data points. He was happy just to be sitting in the middle of them--accepted, taken for granted. 

Before long Sylvie was nodding off, and when she curled up against the chair and started snoring Levi nudged him. Eren looked over to where Levi was pointing and he got up to take a blanket down from a shelf, spreading it over her. Somehow she looked even smaller asleep.

“How old is she?” he asked, sitting back down at Levi’s side.

“Ten. Eleven in April.”

 _“That_ old?” 

“She’s just small, like Levi,” Hanji murmured. 

Levi didn’t say anything, but Eren thought he saw his eye twitch; he grinned. 

“That reminds me,” Hanji said absently as she chewed on the end of a pen. Levi reached across Eren to knock it out of her mouth. “We need to start planning her party.”

“Hanji, April’s months away. We might all be dead before then.”

“Yes, but probably not. And it will take time to get the supplies in. She said she wants sushi.”

“Sushi,” Levi repeated, in tones that suggested Sylvie had asked for an Apple of Hesperides. He had stopped typing to stare at her.

“Yes, I thought we could go fishing,” Hanji said blithely.

Levi said something under his breath; it might have been, _“You’re insane.”_

“She deserves it. She’s a good girl.”

“No she isn’t,” Levi said. “She’s a budding sociopath.”

“You like her.”

Levi grunted. 

“She’s our daughter, Levi! We have to give her a good party.”

“Funny, I don’t remember siring her. Was it an immaculate conception, Hanji?”

“Well, I’m not having the other parents show us up, no matter what you say,” Hanji remarked, gathering her things together. “If she wants sushi, she’s getting sushi.”

“Hanji, most of those children are orphans. _What_ other parents?”

“Sasha’s been feeling overwhelmed, and each child has been assigned at least two adults to spend extra time with,” Hanji said primly. “You’d know that if you checked your email!”

“Are you putting her to bed?”

“Yes, I’ll take her down to the lab with me,” Hanji said, pulling the still-sleeping Sylvie up onto her shoulder. “Good night, Eren!” Hanji said cheerfully.

“Good night,” Eren replied. He retrieved the blanket Hanji had left behind and put it over his own shoulders.

“Where were you going?”

“Huh?”

“When you got up you were going downstairs before you came into the kitchen.”

“Oh...nowhere,” Eren said with a guilty start. He'd forgotten all about that.

“Liar,” Levi said mildly.

Eren sighed. “I had a nightmare. I was just...looking for a distraction.”

“You saw the liquor in the pantry, huh? Hanji doesn’t have a problem with people self-medicating, within reason.”

Eren squirmed. “I probably would have thought better of it once I got down there, if you want to know the truth,” he mumbled. “I always did before.”

Once again Levi’s fingers stilled on the keyboard, and he turned to look at Eren.

“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” he asked after a momentary pause. “Did you really think I was going to rise up from the grave to knock the bottle out of your hand?”

They were talking about those lost months Eren had spent alone. As if he’d spelled it out, Levi could see Eren walking through an empty half-looted liquor store, sneakers crunching through broken glass, sticking to the linoleum floor. Just looking. Eren knew that he’d surprised Levi. It gave him the courage to meet his gaze. 

“You worked hard on me,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to piss you off by throwing my life away.”

If Levi felt exposed he didn’t show it. “Good,” was all he said.

Eren had been in love before, but he’d never felt such an extraordinary pull towards anyone. It went beyond attraction. Levi turned back to his computer, and Eren stood up to go back to his own room.

It was obvious to him that there was some kind of hierarchy in Levi; that, for whatever reason, he’d been allowed to slip through the gates and past the guards, to be elevated to the exalted heights of being teased and told off and taken for granted.

He wondered if Levi felt anything more for him than that. It didn’t help that he’d never been interested in a man before, and he had no idea if Levi was straight or gay or asexual or what. The weird thing--and the reason he was leaving--was that he was half-sure that if he’d tried to kiss Levi then Levi would have let him. 

But he wouldn’t have known if it was what Levi wanted. 

He wasn’t even sure if it was what he wanted. He’d always been serially monogamous; all the way back to first grade and his crush on Miss Patty, who had only been superceded when Lily had kissed him in the coat closet on a dare, giggling and then running back to her girlfriends. It had been one girl after another, and he’d hardly ever even jerked off to porn--nodding along whenever one of the male groups he’d wandered through during his teen years started waxing eloquent about their favorite videos, but always secretly bored.

He was still serially monogamous. Levi had eclipsed the last few girls he’d been with, like the sun crossing the horizon and filling the sky. And--like a stargazer, discovering his first sunrise--Eren didn’t know what to do with it. If he’d been sure of Levi he might have risked it, but…

He was pretty sure he loved Levi, and you didn’t want to hurt the ones you loved, even by accident.

“Eren.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m glad you didn’t give up.”

He couldn’t even try to pretend to himself that that didn’t fill him up, from head to toe. “Yeah,” he said, and floated back to his room.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Fam goes to Costco_

 

 

 

 

Sylvie shrieked; Eren was running all-out through the Costco and she clung to the sides of the shopping cart. 

They were close to a headphone display, hundreds of clear plastic clamshell packages stacked on cardboard shelving. 

“No, hit it!” Sylvie screamed as Eren started to swerve. So he did; the crash was tremendous, the cart kept going until it hit one of the giant metal warehouse shelves and Sylvie laughed hysterically while Eren fell over, landing more or less in the headphone pile. 

“What the fuck?” Levi said. He was stacking laptops on a pallet in the electronics section, no more than twenty feet away.

Eren grinned up from the ground. “Sorry,” he said unrepentantly. 

“Sylvie, pick that shit up.”

“Why?” she said, not moving an inch.

“Because you promised to behave if we brought you, and if you don’t fucking listen to me I’m never taking you anywhere again.”

Sylvie climbed out of the shopping cart and pulled the display up, mumbling under her breath, “Who cares, it’s not like anybody works here anymore…”

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to destroy shit for no reason.”

Eren helped her heap the headphones back onto their display unit, and when they’d finished she ran off to look at the books in the middle of the store. Levi had gone back to scavenging the electronics.

“Sorry,” Eren said again.

“Please.” Levi waved a dismissive hand at him. “Like I give a shit. I just don’t want her acting like a fucking maniac; more than she already does, anyway.” Almost as an afterthought Levi added, “I’m glad she’s warming up to you.”

“That's not what you said last night,” Eren said, grinning; Levi had had some choice words for them when they had interrupted his late night coding with an impromptu breakdance party. Levi gave him a sly look, which Eren had learned to interpret as ‘amused and not willing to admit it.’

Sylvie was a strange little savage biting monkey--she fought with the other kids, disturbed the adults, would have run completely wild if it weren’t for Hanji and Levi. They had tamed her a little--Levi had started teaching her to program, and given her small jobs and chores to do, and though Hanji didn’t seem particularly maternal to Eren her odd blend of pragmatism and eccentricity appealed to Sylvie. But they both were too busy to focus all their attention on her. 

Eren didn’t have the knowledge to perform any of the skilled jobs in the camp. Keeping Sylvie company (and out of trouble) made him feel useful. He’d tried his hand at a few things--from gardening to carpentry--but he was bored and easily distracted. Apart from learning to use the maneuver gear (and that he _was_ doing well at, sheer determination making up for the awkwardness of learning to use his body in a totally different way) he’d begun to feel slightly useless.

Especially after the first two weeks, when in addition to his terrible nightmares and insomnia he’d started having _panic attacks._ It was so stupid--he’d been rescued, he was in relative safety, why _now?_ It had never happened to him before--he’d lived through plenty of fucked up things and he’d never…

At first he’d been lucky, because they’d happened in his room, or near enough that he could retreat there until he had calmed down.

But then one day it had happened when he’d been on his way to lunch--suddenly the hall was filled with people, moving in the same direction. He’d frozen. Feeling sheer disbelief at his own weakness and stupidity.

He had stalled out, motionless in that sea of people. Then Sylvie had walked towards him, all four foot ten of her moving against the tide. At that point she hadn’t even liked him (or so he’d thought) viewing him only as unworthy competition for Levi’s attention. She had taken his hand and led him away--as natural as as if they had arranged to meet there.

He couldn’t remember what she’d said to him--his next memory was listening to her instruct him how to breathe, and they were sitting on plastic milk crates in a room he’d never been in.

He did what she told him. And then he could speak again; suddenly, like something out of a fairy tale.

“Where are we?” he asked. “Is this the server room?”

It was dimly lit, and there were racks of blinking computer towers neatly arrayed in rows all around them. It was surprisingly cool, and after a moment he realized: well, of course it would be--Levi would be the last person to let a server room overheat.

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought Levi kept it locked?” As far as he knew only Hanji and Levi had access to this room; they both agreed that it was more prudence than paranoia. 

Sylvie grunted, fiddling with her shoelace. “He does.” Well, that explained everything...

“Do you--have panic attacks too?” he asked. He felt foolish, but not as much as he would have if someone else had found him. Sylvie had guided him through it with surprising competency and patience.

“Of course not,” she scoffed, and Eren couldn’t help but smile. “You should tell Hanji. She can give you books and stuff to help.”

Sylvie could be sharp and vicious but she was also genuine, capable of surprising tenderness. When all else failed--when she was moody and disagreeable--he could talk to her about books. As they spent more time together he learned that they had been a refuge for her, even before the Titans had come. As a child he had always read with his mother--he’d almost given up reading after she’d died. She was the one who had first encouraged him to read _The Iliad_ after his father had gone, and ever since he had returned to it in times of sorrow and hardship.

His mother had been a lawyer and she had worked long hours, but she had always made time to read. She’d encouraged Mikasa and Eren to do the same.

It was strange to think that he felt closer to her now than he had since she’d died. Strange that he was the adult now, talking about Roald Dahl and e.e. cummings to a kid, finding himself saying things his mother had once said to him. Strange that it had taken the apocalypse to make him get over losing her. And strange to think he was living in a world she never could have imagined, outside of a pulp science fiction novel.

He felt guilty now for throwing years of his life away. He saw now--how he hadn't before--she’d worked so hard to hold them all together. His dad had never read much fiction, which was odd when you thought about how literary his mother had been. She’d said it was because he’d been raised in the old Soviet Union; he couldn’t relate to books and characters he hadn’t grown up with. Eren had thought it was because he was just wired differently; his father read _Popular Mechanics_ and _Scientific America_ just fine.

Eren pushed his shopping cart over to the pharmacy which Hanji was busily clearing out. Many stores had been looted in the days after the Titans had attacked, but this Costco had been oddly pristine--one of Levi’s drones had found it. They’d driven two hours to get here, leaving right at sunset in an 18-wheeler that Levi had acquired specially for this trip.

“You can drive this?” Eren had said, impressed, as they’d loaded it up that afternoon in the driveway.

“I can drive anything,” Levi had replied with a trace of smugness.

Hanji gave him a quick, distracted smile and he began helping her load up bottles of medication and first aid supplies. She had an enormous list she was consulting of all the things they needed--they would take back as much as they could tonight, and return later for more. 

“Maybe we should have brought more people,” he said after a while; they were loading box after box onto u-boats Hanji had raided from the store room.

“Eh,” she said. “Erwin was nervous about us bringing too many people with us, going so far from home.” She stopped to take a long drink from her water bottle. “It seems safe enough though. When we come back we’ll see if we can get some more volunteers. Let’s load this into the truck. It's already midnight.”

 

 

 

 

There was space in the cab of the truck for a driver and passenger, and directly behind the driver’s area was another space with a makeshift seat and fold-down cot. It took an hour for them to finish loading the truck; even Sylvie looked sleepy by the end, but that didn’t stop her from reaching for the iPod connected to the sound system as they all climbed in.

“No,” Levi said, swatting her. “No music. I’ve had enough Paul Simon to last me for the rest of my life, thanks.”

Eren laughed guiltily; the music available at the house was eclectic--Hanji and Levi’s personal libraries, whatever the survivors had had with them at the time they’d been rescued, and a random smattering of things they’d been able to download before the internet had gone down. Eren had found a few CDs in Costco to fill in some more of the gaps. He was the one that had introduced Sylvie to Paul Simon, which had become her new obsession; another thing his mother had once shared with him, that now he was sharing with her…

“I like Paul Simon,” Sylvie said, glaring at him.

“No shit,” Levi said. “We’re not listening to music.”

“What if I pick?” Eren said, trying to forestall the argument. He could tell Sylvie was overtired and not in the mood to back down. Lately she’d been more defiant with Levi.

Sylvie looked partly mollified, but Levi snorted derisively. 

“Oh, give him a chance,” Hanji said, pushing past him to get into the back with Sylvie. “Don’t be such a grouch.”

“I’ll pick something you like,” Eren said winningly, and Levi snorted again.

“You don’t know what I like.”

“You like Motown and Billie Holiday,” Eren said promptly and Levi narrowed his eyes. Hanji chuckled from the back. Levi gave him the iPod.

 

 

 

 

 

It had started to snow. When Eren peeked behind he saw Hanji and Sylvie had fallen asleep already, each of them taking up half the cot. He settled back in his seat. 

_All of Me_ was playing, soft strains of piano winding through Billie Holiday’s voice as the the flakes swirled in the darkness outside. Eren had a feeling--a sudden intuition--that it was one of Levi’s favorite songs. 

They hadn’t spoken since the music had started playing, but Eren didn’t try to sleep himself. It was a shitty thing to be driving in the middle of the night when all your passengers were asleep; he knew from experience.

“Where’d you learn to drive these?” Eren said, when the song had ended and been replaced by another jazzy track.

“When I was in Europe. Smuggling and drug running and whatnot.”

Eren barked out a laugh. “Serious?”

“Mm.”

“How’d you even get into that?”

“I beat up a guy one night...I was living on the street. Couple of guys were nearby, gangsters. I guess I impressed them.”

“Why’d you beat him up?”

“He was hitting his girlfriend,” Levi said. “He was probably three times my size, so it made an impression. The other guys offered me a job on the spot.”

Eren shook his head, drawing one of his legs up to hug against his chest. Levi had lived such a strange, exotic life. “How did you learn to fight like that?”

“My uncle,” Levi said briefly, and though there wasn’t anything dangerous about the way he said it Eren let the conversation go; he liked that Levi was relatively open with him. He didn’t want to do anything to trample that intimacy.

It was hard living at the camp. At least, he found it hard, certainly harder than he ever could have imagined when he’d been on his own and he’d wished _constantly_ to be around other people again. Good, after his terrible winter and fall--miraculous even--but hard too. Confining, constricting in some ways. It was hard to have privacy, hard to be alone without being isolated…and for Eren it was hard to share Levi with other people. They rarely had moments like this--at night, Hanji or Sylvie would be there, and during the day there was everyone else. Levi was different when it was the two of them alone.

Eren held onto that. When he had been small his father had given him things--foreign coins, a tiny gold nugget, a flawed uncut emerald that his dad had found spelunking somewhere. Eren kept them all in an old wooden cigar box that he’d gotten from his mother’s father. His treasures. He’d play pirates with Armin with the stuff--they’d take turns burying it in the sandbox at the playground, or hiding it in the ramshackle treehouse in the backyard. His treasure. Something to hug to his chest, to hold on to when he was alone, something to remember his father by after he had gone.

The feeling he had when he was alone with Levi--it was the same feeling of hugging something precious close.

He still didn’t know what to call it, though he’d mostly gotten over the maybe-I’m-gay panic. Or at least he’d found that he didn’t care anymore. He wanted to be with Levi, he wanted to be close to him all the time; Levi was magnetic, and he guessed maybe he did understand a part of it. 

He and Sylvie...it was sort of funny in a way. They both recognized Levi as someone who could protect them, not just from present dangers but from the demons of their pasts. Levi had survived; that was proof that _they_ could survive too. 

“Did you ever…” Eren said suddenly. 

Levi glanced over. “What?”

“Nothing. Stupid.” He looked out the window. “Just a feeling I’d get...sometimes...when I was driving at night. I wished that it would just stay night, that I could drive forever…”

“Are we talking about thanatos?”

Eren smiled. “Not exactly. Maybe a little of that. I used to take off at night...sneak out of the house after my mom and Mikasa were asleep. Go for long drives. Not anywhere, just to be out and driving...I don’t know. I felt at peace, I guess. It’s stupid.”

“No. It’s not stupid. It’s not like anything else. That feeling when you’re alone in your car, and you know you could go anywhere…”

“You won’t, but you _could_...” Eren was smiling. “The only problem is that the sun always comes up…”

Levi smirked at him sideways, and Eren laughed at himself. “All right, maybe it is a little bit of thanatos…”

“I don’t think it’s exactly that. I guess it would be a curious afterlife. Just driving alone in your car, with no destination, forever…”

“It sounds nice, when you say it like that.” Eren smiling at him again.

Levi was quiet for a minute, and then he said, “I do know what you mean. I’ve never talked about it to anyone, but I know exactly what you mean.” Eren tried to work out if he sounded surprised, or pleased, frustrated, or angry, but he couldn’t--he sounded neutral. He sounded like Levi.

Eren looked out of the window, and because it was dark and night and snowing and because they were alone but together and because Billie Holiday was playing, he said, “I feel that way about you.”

Levi didn’t answer. Eren hadn’t expected him to. He knew he was...not pushing at Levi’s boundaries, but stepping past them. It hadn’t felt like a risk, for once. There was still another hour before they’d reach the camp, and he luxuriated in that the way he had once when he’d been young, waking up in the middle of the night and discovering he still had hours before he had to get up for school.

Outside, the snow fell and the night around them was dark and quiet; inside it was just them, the music playing and the _shhh_ of the wipers gliding across the windshield. It took Eren a long time to realize what he was feeling, and when he did he smiled and pressed his head against the cool glass.


End file.
